No, resurrecting earmarks won’t make Congress work better
This process of “lettermarking” (or, in some cases, “phonemarking”) allows legislators to effectively get around the earmarking ban—but there’s a catch. Research shows that lettermarking is only really effective if multiple lawmakers write to request the same type of line item. For example, R Street Institute, a nonpartisan public policy think tank, found that, when it came to Small Community Air Service Development grants, it took multiple lawmakers writing in unison to get funding inserted. This stacks the deck in favor of programs with benefits spanning multiple districts, as opposed to, say, an earmark funding a statue of a lawmaker. This earmarking by other means hardly represents government at its finest. Nonetheless, the rise of lettermarking and phonemarking have made for earmarks that are less interesting—mariachi music studies and strange museums are largely behind us. That’s a good thing.
