May 8, 2023 in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
WASHINGTON – On the campaign trail, Derrick Van Orden was critical of Democrats’ revival of earmarks and claimed the practice would “open the door for corruption.”
But now, in his first year in Congress, the Wisconsin Republican appears to have changed his mind on the federal spending lawmakers can direct to projects in their home districts. Van Orden last month requested just under $73 million in earmarks — more than the rest of the state’s House delegation combined.
Democratic U.S. Reps. Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan requested $33 million and $24 million in earmarks, respectively. And Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald was the only other member of Wisconsin’s GOP delegation to file a request, which totaled about $4 million.
Van Orden’s request came two years after he criticized Democrats for reinstituting earmarks when he was a candidate for the 3rd Congressional District seat that he won in 2022.
The earmark process, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a May 2021 statement, “is just another way for (Democrats) to continue to solidify power.” He referenced his opponent, who announced his retirement later that year. “Representative Ron Kind and others are strictly beholden to special interest groups who have funded them and this will open the door to corruption.”
Asked about Van Orden’s decision to request earmarks despite previously opposing their renewal, a spokeswoman for the freshman congressman pointed to new rules for earmarks put in place by Republicans earlier this year.
“At the beginning of this Congress, House Republicans narrowed the rules for earmarks because they were being blatantly abused by Democrats to fund corruption projects,” Anna Kelly, the spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Rep. Van Orden has consistently opposed undue influence by special interests in Washington that leads to corruption.”
Democrats revived earmarks last Congress after a decade-long moratorium on the process widely seen at the time as wasteful and corrupt. They imposed new rules that in part limited the number of earmarks a lawmaker could request, required members to post requests publicly to their websites and held that earmarks cannot total more than 1% of discretionary spending in an appropriations bill. Lawmakers were also made to certify that they had no financial interest in the request.
House Republicans voted to lift their own internal ban on earmarks the same year, and both parties requested similar sums. Proponents of the change argued earmarks provided incentives for bipartisan cooperation on legislation.
When Republicans took control of the House this year, they further tightened those rules, banning earmarks from Labor-Health and Human Services-Education, Financial Services and Defense appropriations bills and imposing more restrictions on so-called “community project funding” earmarks.
Those restrictions cap earmark spending at 0.5% of a bill’s discretionary spending and require lawmakers to prove there is a “federal nexus” to their requests. Earmark requests for memorials, museums and other commemoratives named for individuals are no longer eligible.
The requests for fiscal year 2024 are not guaranteed and are subject to change during the appropriations process. The current requests have not yet been approved.
Van Orden’s office did not detail specific changes made by Republicans this year that made the process more acceptable for the first-term lawmaker.
The Prairie du Chien Republican’s nearly $73 million earmark requests covered 15 projects and included $25 million toward reconstructing a Chippewa Valley road; $19.2 million to help the City of Eau Claire address PFAS issues with their drinking water; $4.5 million toward a new La Crosse fire station; and $3.4 million toward security tools for a La Crosse-based energy cooperative, among other requests.
(Kind, Van Orden’s Democratic predecessor, in 2021 requested about $47 million for 10 projects, which included $15.7 million for a countywide broadband fiber optic loop in rural Grant County, $7.3 million to reconstruct an old levee in Eau Claire and funding toward a new fire station and law enforcement equipment.)
Despite his previous comments, Van Orden’s use of earmarks is not out of the ordinary. In fact, Kind supported banning earmarks over a decade ago because of abuses of the system before supporting their renewal last Congress due to the new rules.
A growing number of Republicans requested earmarks this year, and an overwhelming majority of members in both parties participated.
Fitzgerald files for funding to assist with Waukesha’s water transition
Fitzgerald, who represents the 5th Congressional District and was the only other Wisconsin Republican to file for an earmark, asked for just over $4 million to help the City of Waukesha transition its water source from contaminated groundwater to water from Lake Michigan.
Specifically, the funding would help Waukesha Water Utility decommission its current groundwater wells and subsequently monitor the city’s water quality for the next 10 years.
Dan Duchniak, Waukesha Water Utility’s general manager, told the Journal Sentinel this week that the decommissioning and monitoring is estimated to cost about $10 million to $12 million. The entire transition is expected to cost upwards of $300 million, and Duchniak said the city is on track to meet its Sept. 1 deadline.
Still, Republican U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil, Mike Gallagher, Glenn Grothman and Tom Tiffany have made no requests for earmarks since the process was restarted last Congress.
Steil previously criticized earmarks as “wasteful, inefficient spending” and Gallagher has said “earmarks and corruption walk hand-in-hand.”
Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has also been an outspoken opponent of earmarks. He introduced an amendment this past December to remove all earmarks from the federal budget.
“This is the gateway drug to the massive deficit spending, to the mortgaging of our children’s future,” Johnson said in December.
Meanwhile, Moore’s $33 million request covered 15 projects and included $3 million to upgrade Milwaukee’s public safety radio system, $2.8 million toward building housing for people re-entering society following prison sentences, $6.5 million toward the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation and $2.2 million to help with lead lateral replacement in West Milwaukee.
And Pocan’s $24 million also covered 15 projects, including $3 million for a Dane County water filtration upgrade, $2 million to expand a Green County YMCA, and $3 million to build a new food pantry in Madison. It also includes a $2 million request for the University of Wisconsin-Madison to aid in PFAS contamination research.
Pocan, who has publicly supported earmarks, presented them as a direct way to help his district in a statement to the Journal Sentinel.
“Unelected people in cubicles in Washington DC, don’t know our districts like we do,” he said. “I’m glad to be able to follow important projects in the district that need support and use my position in Congress to make sure that I can help local communities.”
Lawrence Andrea 