Debate Over Federal Spending Continues

The debate over federal spending continued in the congressional race last week with Democrat Ed Potosnak calling for his Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance, to disclose certain spending requests, a call Lance promptly rejected.

Potosnak issued a press release calling on Lance to release his spending requests for federal programs in the last year, saying that transparency is needed in the spending category. Currently members of Congress are only required to disclose their requests for specific projects in their districts – known as earmarks. 

"Congress should be transparent not only for earmark requests, but for programmatic spending requests allotted to federal agencies," Potosnak said in a statement.  "I encourage Congressman Lance to release the list of his fiscal year 2011 programmatic appropriations requests and their respective dollar amounts."

Lance, in an interview with Patch, rejected the request saying he and other Republicans in the House of Representatives decided to not request funding this year. Todd Mitchell, Lance's chief of staff who attended the interview, said the vote taken by House Republicans covered earmarks and other specific funding requests.

"He does not know what he is talking about," Mitchell said about Potosnak. "There are no requests. The GOP conference took a conference vote."

Potosnak's call on programmatic appropriations requests follows a two-week long debate between both candidates on the issue of federal spending and earmarks. The debate started when Lanceanswered questions raised by Downtown Westfield Corporation Director Sherry Cronin regarding potential infrastructure funding for downtown Westfield, saying he is in favor of increasing the amount of taxpayer money the federal government returns to New Jersey. The current statistic ranks the state 50th in the nation in returning the amount.

Potosnak has criticized Lance over his role in obtaining federal spending, pledging to seek more federal spending if elected. Mitchell, responding for his boss, said that Lance is looking to lower the federal tax rate in order to increase the amount that New Jersey receives back from the federal government annually.

The debate follows Lance being criticized during the spring Republican primary for accepting earmarks after pledging to reform the process during his 2008 campaign. One of Lance's failed primary opponents, David Larsen, hit the incumbent for his designation as a "porker of the month" by the group Citizens Against Government Waste for advocating for funds for new lighting in Cranford, a hike and bike path in Bedminster and a dental clinic in Hunterdon County.

Sean Q. Kelly, the co-author of "Cheese Factories on the Moon: Why Earmarks are Good for American Democracy," a soon to be released book defending the use of earmarks, said there are distinct differences between earmarks and the type of spending Potosnak is calling on Lance to disclose. Kelly said programmatic appropriations fund broader government programs, including the maintenance of existing programs. He said the requests normally do not dive into specific district-by-district projects like earmarks.

"It's not technically speaking an earmark," said Kelly, a political science professor at California State University – Channel Islands. "Earmarks are really about amounts and locations of spending."

Kelly said that in his research, which included bipartisan interviews with current and former members of Congress, the kind of programmatic requests that Postosnak has asked for disclosure on have not been found as much as earmarks. He said most members of Congress have paid more attention to specific projects – earmark spending – than to the broader program spending categories. 

He said most of the requests he and his co-author, Scott Frisch, have found have been for continuation of spending on transportation projects or other programmatic funding previously obtained through a specific earmark. 

At the same time he said members will make requests for the programmatic appropriations that assist projects in their district, in order to obtain votes in the next election. He said with the current political environment in Washington, it is not surprising that Lance and other congressional Republicans are not making the requests this year.

"It will upset the Republican leadership," he said.