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February 13, 2012

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POLITICAL MEMO:

Earmarks: Will Sen. Reid’s rankings help or haunt him?

By David McGrath Schwartz (contact)

Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Harry Reid

Harry Reid

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Earmarks, those lines in bills that bring home money to Senate and House members’ states, can be a political Rorschach test.

Do you see in them a politician delivering projects for constituents? Or wasteful spending saddling future generations with debt, all to help a politician get reelected?

So it is with Sen. Harry Reid’s ranking for the amount his earmarks are worth. In 2008, he ranked 15th among the 100 senators in joint and solo earmarked dollars delivered to his state, according to the nonpartisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. In 2009, he ranked 28th.

Whether this is read as an impressive performance (Nevada’s a small state; Reid uses his influence for constituents in ways other than earmarks) or a poor one (senators from other small states — Mississippi, Iowa, Hawaii and Alaska — delivered more; he’s focused on his national role at the expense of Nevada) largely depends on which side of the partisan divide you’re on.

Reid is basing his 2010 reelection campaign in large part on the argument that he is too strong in Washington for Nevada to lose. His latest campaign ad boasts that he’s “America’s most powerful senator.”

In emphasizing what he delivers for the state, the campaign is setting high expectations for voters looking for tangible measures of Reid’s influence.

“After you’ve run an ad about being the most powerful senator Nevada has ever had, Nevadans might be excused if they’re expecting a better ranking,” said Jennifer Duffy, Senate analyst for the Cook Political Report.

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the Senate majority leader has secured earmarks “as a way to fund vital projects throughout Nevada, most of which have led to good-paying jobs for Nevadans.”

He added, “While different groups analyze earmarks in different ways, the constant in Reid’s mind is that they are a good tool for bringing hard-earned taxpayer dollars back to the state.”

Reid’s influence can be measured in many ways, from his role in shaping national policy such as the health care legislation, securing Nevada’s spot as an early caucus site in the Democratic presidential primary process and blocking construction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

But earmarks are a good way to measure clout, Duffy said.

“This is one of the very few tangible things you can take home to voters, that you can point to to answer the question, ‘what have you done for me lately?’ ” she said. “You can point to a road, a bridge, a building, an Army recruiting center. It’s easier to point to these things than say you had an obscure amendment in the tax bill, or cast over a thousand votes and held this many hearings.”

Nevada has long lagged in the federal funding game, consistently ranking as one of the largest donor states, meaning it pays more in federal taxes than it receives in return. The debate was reignited this year, when Republicans complained that Nevada was getting the second-fewest dollars per capita from the federal stimulus. (Reid’s campaign pointed to the state’s stinginess in coming up with matching funding to collect more federal dollars as a reason for the low ranking.)

Still, Reid will have to prove to voters that the $305 million in 2008 and $212 million in 2009 in both joint and solo earmarks are sizable.

Reid, indeed, has brought home more than his share compared with the rest of Nevada’s congressional delegation. In both 2008 and 2009, he brought in more solo earmarks than the rest of the delegation combined.

By comparison, Sen. John Ensign ranked 75th among U.S. senators for joint and solo earmarked dollars in 2008 and 76th in 2009.

But Ensign doesn’t face reelection until 2012. And the other members of Nevada’s delegation aren’t arguing to voters that they should be reelected because of their power.

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