My Experience with Congressional Earmarks (Part II)

At the Defense Logistics Agency I was given the task to spend $750K on a third party logistics study no one needed. The only basis for the requirement was one line in a congressional conference report. The kicker was the study had to be conducted by a “not-for-profit trucking research agency”. The internet was coming of age and I popped those words into the search engine Lycos. The top result: The American Trucking Association. (Even today, a similar Google search brings up the American Trucking Research Institute – the research arm of the ATA; I do not believe the ATRI was in place in 1996/1997).

I researched the ATA and found among other things, they are a lobbying organization which had made quite a few donations to members of the Armed Services Appropriations Committee (both sides of the aisle).

Shortly after I found out about the ATA, I got a call from someone in the ATA. “Where is our contract?” he asked. I told him I was going to compete it. I was ticked about such a blatant misuse of tax dollars. It turned out that the total amount set aside was $1Million. I only had $750K but another $250K was set aside for a rail security study that the US Transportation Command was to place on contract.

I found the Army Lt Col tasked with spending the $250K. He was livid. Since the requiring language was in a house conference report and not in the actual appropriations bill signed into law by the President technically we were not constrained to spend the money as written in the conference. It wasn’t in the law. He took that position to the staff lawyers, and the issue eventually got to the vice-commander of USTRANSCOM. The vice-commander directed the money be spent according to the “intent” outlined in the conference report. He did not want angry congressmen to hamper other USTRANSOM projects.

I was in a different agency and the USTRANSCOM decision did not affect me, but I was sure the DLA leadership would say the same thing, if I approached them formally. I resolved to do two things. First, stretch the interpretation of the study’s direction to something that would be actually useful. Second, I wasn’t about to sole source this to a lobbyist. They would have to compete for the effort (albeit I was constrained to have the competition among “not-for-profit trucking research institutes”, if others could be found).