The Senate is currently working on the Defense Department Appropriations. The legislation provides the framework for spending $625 billion for the nation’s defense. Yes, even today, in Obamamerica, that is a lot money. No surprise, then, that this enormous pot-o-money attracts a load of earmarks.

Now, an earmark itself doesn’t necessarily increase the total amount of money being spent. It simply allows a Congressman or Senator to slice off a small chunk of money and REQUIRE that it be spent in the way they think best. Of course, there are all sorts of problems with this (see Murtha, John).

The least bad is that the money isn’t spent effeciently. A slightly worse problem is that the earmark consumes money that isn’t then available for what may be more pressing needs. Which makes earmarks in the Defense spending bill, um, troublesome. Are politicians really the best choice for deciding how to allocate specific resources to defend our nation and protect our uniformed men and women?

Let’s take a current example:

The Senate is currently debating Committee Report 111-74. This, basically, is the language passed by the Senate Committee on Appropriations, which will be amended to the full bill. The full text of the Committee Report can be found here.

If you go to Page 70, you will find the overall committee recommendations for “Operation and Maintenance-Army National Guard.” This covers all operations of the Army National Guard and the repair and maintenance of its equipment. This money ensures that Army National Guard units are fully trained, ready and equipped when they are called to duty. Overall, the Committee recommends cutting around $300 million from the Army National Guard.

On Page 71-72, you will see specific changes to the Guard’s budget recommended by the Committee. At the top of page 72 you will see:

Army National Guard Unit History Records +5,000(,000)

Hmm…the committee added $5,000,000 for “Unit History Records”, even though the overall budget was cut by $300 million. On page 276, you can see that this line-item (earmark) was added by Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT).

To his credit, Sen. Bob Bennett discloses all his earmark requests on his Senate Website. A few clicks in (Issues/Appropriations/Armed Services Committee) reveals this description:

Item Name: Army National Guard Unit History Records

Request: $5,000,000

Account: Operations and Maintenance, Defense-Wide

Suggested Recipient: Storyrock

Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Purpose/Project Description:

To honor and recognize the service of each individual service members with the presentation of their personalized unit historical and current record of service as a legacy tool they can share with family for generations; to educate the public through presentation of same historical records for hands-on use to each school in the state, each media outlet, and every legislative representative.

From StoryRock’s website:

StoryRock Electronic Publishing develops customer-specific programs that help save, organize, and share memories. By incorporating photos, scanned images, and text documents along with other digital tools such as video, narration, music and Web links, we help make every story captivating.

Well.

Look, our men and women in the National Guard provide critical service to our nation. But, scrapbooks? When the Guard’s budget is already being cut by around $300 million, do we really want to carve out $5 million from remaining funds and REQUIRE the Guard to purchase scrapbooks? (Oh, and from a specific company in the home state of the earmarking Senator…natch.) Instead of maintaining vitally important equipment, we’re just going to pause for a “creative memories” moment? Do you think individual men and women in the Guard would make this choice?

It is a small item. But, it is about 5 million reasons why any of you thinking we just need the GOP back in charge are wrong.