Republican Hypocrites: Earmarks still have friends in high places

Earmarks still have friends in high places




By JONATHAN ALLEN | 5/15/12 6:37 PM EDT Updated: 5/15/12 8:48 PM EDT

A provision for a uranium-enrichment plant in Ohio keeps cropping up all over Capitol Hill: $150 million in the Senate’s highway bill, $150 million in a Senate energy bill, $100 million in that bill’s House counterpart. There’s even talk of putting it in a final House-Senate transportation bill.

Weren’t grants like this — earmarks by another name — supposed to be banished by Republicans in Congress? Yes. And for most lawmakers, they are.

But the earmark has the top two Republicans in Congress on its side: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). And by Congress’ own rules, it’s not an earmark. Definitions aside, it is proof that when top politicians want to pay for a pet project, they can usually find a way.

Both men have a rooting interest: The company that would get the money, the United States Enrichment Corp., has a facility in Paducah in McConnell’s home state. Its new plant would be in Piketon, a little bit east of Boehner’s Ohio district. McConnell got the piece that he cared most about on Tuesday when the Energy Department extended operations at the Paducah site.

Even President Barack Obama has a stake in the outcome. In 2008, he promised then-Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland that he would support nuclear-energy programs like the one in Piketon. Now, he needs the state’s electoral votes again — and he wants the $150 million government subsidy, which could prevent layoffs in an election year.

Add to its list of backers both of Ohio’s senators, potential Republican vice presidential candidate Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who is up for reelection this year, who teamed up to put it in the highway bill.

With that kind of muscle, the provision’s backers just needed a way around the earmark ban. So the money isn’t directed to the facility by name, it was requested by the administration and the legislative language doesn’t specify a precise dollar amount — rather it gives the Energy Department the power to spend “up to” a certain amount on the project. They argue that it should be treated as a national issue, not a local one, because USEC is the only U.S.-owned company that could do the work.

“Technically, it’s not an earmark, but it operates effectively as one,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. “It’s definitely a backdoor earmark.”

It’s the kind that gave earmarks a bad name in the first place: Taxpayer dollars going to local projects sought by Washington’s power set, often without a hint of their fingerprints on it.

At times, the Ohio and Kentucky delegations have parted ways on the question of funding for the Ohio project. It could mean that the Paducah plant gets left behind in favor of a focus on the new technology that would be used in Piketon if it ever proves viable. But if USEC struggles, it’s bad for both states.

Last year, Boehner unsuccessfully pushed the White House to give USEC a $2 billion loan guarantee out of the same account from which the now-notorious renewable energy firm Solyndra got its government money. McConnell, a longtime supporter of loan guarantees for nuclear energy, appeared at an Appropriations Committee hearing last year to plead with Energy Secretary Steven Chu to save USEC jobs in Paducah.

The Energy Department didn’t award the loan guarantee — the company has run into some technological problems — but instead offered to enter into a cost-sharing arrangement to make it easier for USEC to do further research and development. USEC threatened to cut jobs. Boehner went public with his frustration.

“I urge the administration to not betray the citizens of Southern Ohio,” he wrote in his weekly column.