My Experience with Congressional Earmarks (Part I)

During my Air Force career, I was once assigned with the Defense Logistics Agency’s (DLA) Distribution Command at their Depot Operations Support Office in Richmond Virginia. We provided engineering support for DLA’s distribution depots, sites where material is stored until requisitioned by U.S. forces throughout the world.

One day my boss handed me an unusual assignment based on one paragraph of direction. I was to put together a contract for a study to determine the feasibility of DLA using third party logistics providers, this study happened to come with $750K of funding. There were three things unusual about this task. The first was the topic of the study. DLA was in the process of using third party logistics providers; we did not need a study to determine the feasibility of the concept. The next anomaly was the lack of a customer for the study. When I asked who requested the study I was told the requirement came from headquarters. My inquiries at Headquarters DLA led me to the legislative liaison office. They told me Congress placed this in a recent appropriation, but they couldn’t tell me who generated it other than some-one on the house defense appropriations committee. The most unusual part of this requirement was the study had to be conducted by a “not-for-profit trucking research firm”.

So, I had $750K I was supposed to spend on a study DLA did not need for someone in Congress not particularly interested in leaving a forwarding address to get the study's results. But they were pretty specific about who was to get the study.

To be continued.