I’m taking a line from a country and western song by George Strait to illustrate a point.
Whenever there are changes to the House or Senate Appropriations Committees, it creates winners and losers in the earmark game.
When Trent Lott resigned from the Senate in December, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour appointed Congressman Roger Wicker to take his seat. This left a vacancy on the House Appropriations Committee – and more specifically on the Defense and Military Construction subcommittees.
House Republicans recently appointed Rep. Jo Bonner of Mobile, Alabama to replace Wicker on the House Approriations Committee. However, they had already given Wicker’s seat on the Defense Subcommittee to
Rep. Kay Granger, who represents Fort Worth, Texas and part of the surrounding area. Granger had previously served on the defense subcommittee, but lost her seat after Republicans lost control of the House in 2006 and the ratio between Democrats and Republicans on the committee was changed accordingly.
The big advantage of getting on the subcommittee is that subcommittee members can expect to receive a much larger share of Congressional earmarks then they did before they got on the subcommittee.
So with Kay Granger on the subcommittee, Fort Worth companies will have an advantage in the defense appropriations process for fiscal 2009. Companies outside the Fort Worth area should take note if they are looking for partners.
Kay Granger is not shy about seeking earmarks – she posts a
list of the ones she’s obtained for her district on her website. Although a Republican, she opposes President Bush’s position on earmarks. "I completely disagree with the president on this," Granger is quoted in the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "You want to clean up the process to make sure there's criteria for earmarks. . . . I have criteria," she said, "and I'm very proud of my earmarks."
The defense bill, which Kay Granger’s subcommittee shapes, dwarves all the other bills as a source of Congressional earmarks for technology. According to analysis done by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, the fiscal 2008 appropriations bills passed by Congress contained nearly $4.5 billion in Congressional earmarked projects for research and development. $3.5 billion of these earmarks, nearly 80%, were contained in the defense bill.