The unexpected passing of Rep. Jack Murtha on February 8 will definitely shake-up the Congressional power structure for defense earmarks. As chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Murtha was the top figure in the House when it came to defense spending. His control of the subcommittee allowed him to include many earmark projects for his district in western Pennsylvania. More importantly, it meant that other Members of Congress who wanted defense earmarks had to go through Murtha.

Murtha’s death is not likely to affect the overall process of defense earmarks. Over the last three years, the process has been reformed and made more transparent, but has still survived. Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the chair of the House Appropriations committee recently announced his intention to limit earmarks to one percent of discretionary spending. Applying the one percent limit to the $550 billion FY2011 defense budget would still translate to about $5.5 billion in earmarks for the defense bill alone.

What will change is who benefits from the defense earmark process. Rep. Norm Dicks is the mostly likely candidate to succeed Murtha at the helm of the defense subcommittee. His district in western Washington state will certainly benefit from his new post. Murtha’s death also means new Democratic vacancies on the defense appropriations subcommittee and the full appropriations committee. Whichever members fill these vacancies will also be in a stronger position to help their districts in the defense earmarking process.

This blog post also appeared as the fifth edition of the Alchemist newsletter.