Making Rules is More Fun Than Obeying Them

Members of Congress are good at making rules. Obeying them, not so much.

One of the key earmark reforms was additional transparency. Members would be required to post links on their websites detailing the projects for which they had requested funding:

Under a rule adopted by the committee for the first time this year, members seeking earmarks were required to post an active link on their congressional websites describing the details of their desired pet projects. The committee gave members until April 4 ... to post online links containing the same earmark request information that members submitted to the committee. ...Members who did not comply with the new rule were supposed to have their earmark requests rejected out of hand.

In Congress-speak, "rejected out of hand" means "don't worry, the deadline was meaningless":

more than 70 members missed the April 4 deadline for having active Web links... Despite the numerous late entries, the Appropriations Committee is taking a lenient approach. “We will continue work with offices to bring them into compliance,” said Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Kirstin Brost.

Apparently, the month of April is full of deadlines that apply to taxpayers, and penalties are always enforced. Tax-spenders, however, usually get a break.

Knowing commentators inside the beltway often dismiss calls for reform of earmarks or other wasteful spending, noting, accurately, that the real fiscal nightmare lies in the entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. But it is not ultimately the size of earmarks or the percentage of the federal budget they consume that is worrisome. It is the culture they engender, a culture of favors, not of openness.

If earmarks are no big deal, why are they so hard for our tax-spenders to give up? Why are reforms always so ephemeral?