The political euphemism glossary, which is non-partisan and being built gradually, is a catalog of the tools, words, and phrases used by political minds to shape how we think or worse, lull us into such a complacency we fail to critically think at all.

The next euphemism to enter the complete glossary is below. Click on the word below for the political definition and description.

Legislatively Directed Spending

In the very first session of Congress this year, the newly Democratic-led House of Representatives passed a resolution requiring members to disclose the earmarks they have placed in spending bills. It would identify what is was for, how much it is for and which House member requested it. This was hailed as fulfilling a promise House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made to “bring transparency and openness to the budget process and to the use of earmarks.” Apparently the celebration came far too early.

Not only does House Speaker Pelosi not want to reveal any earmarks she’s added to the current spending bills, she doesn’t even want you to say the word “earmark.” She had this to say to her colleagues on the floor:

If I just might direct the record to another place, why don’t we just leave this room today forgetting the word earmark? This is legislatively directed spending as opposed to executive spending.

CNN has reported that they asked all the House members to inform them of the earmarks, erm… legislatively directed spending requests they have submitted into the pending bill. The result of the new transparency is that only 31 out of 435 members, just seven percent, provided the information. 68 members flatly refused to provide the information and the rest just ignored the request. Even Nancy Pelosi’s staff said the they would not reveal her earmarks.

So when the House Speaker says she’s going to bring a new era of transparency and openness, what she means is renaming earmarks so they don’t sound so politically beneficial, and then declining to reveal what ones she’s responsible for.

The New York Times reported that Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey, has decided to change how each congressmember’s pet pork barrel projects, known as earmarks, get reviewed. He’s decided that the 36,000 earmarks will be posted in the Congressional Record one month before they’ll be voted on for final approval. That’s 36,000 individual spending requests valued at over $64 billion on top of the normal budget. This will give the public an opportunity to raise questions and potentially force earmark sponsors to defend their projects to someone other than their enabling buddies in the House. Rep. Obey’s also indicated “that a crush of work gave the committee staff insufficient time to evaluate the thousands of requests for projects earlier.”

Want to help evaluate the requests?

Porkbusters is offering to help the committee out. They are running a letter template you can email to Rep. Obey offering to help him and his committee to review the earmarks in our spare time. Think of it as distributed budget evaluation support. While I’m sure some of the earmarks are valid and worthy of the expense, many others are nothing more than a way to payback large contributors by getting them the government project they’d like. These earmarks are the coin of the realm in Congress. You think the Congress wrote up 36,000 individual earmarks? Lobbyists and special interest groups write them up so their favorite representative can slip them into a much larger spending bill at a later time.

While I wouldn’t honestly expect anything to come from signing up, at a minimum it’s a show of support for a higher degree of financial accountability in an organization that currently shows close to none.