In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the public's attention focused first on the immediate relief effort and how much it would cost. With most of the evac­uees now in more adequate forms of shelter, attention is shifting to the cost of repair and reconstruction and the question of who will pay for it. Although current estimates vary widely and most are without much foundation in fact, the relief, repair, and reconstruc­tion costs of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita will total well into the tens of billions of dollars in public and private spending.

To pay for the federal share of the recovery costs, many have suggested finding spending offsets in wasteful and poorly conceived federal programs, par­ticularly in the stunningly wasteful highway bill that the President signed into law on August 10, 2005.^[1] Tens of billions of dollars could also be saved by cut­ting or eliminating other, low-priority federal spending programs.^[2]After several weeks of intense public pres­sure to enact such offsets, leaders in the House of Rep­resentatives finally relented and agreed on October 6 to seek spending cuts totaling $50 billion, plus additional reductions through an across-the-board cut in discre­tionary spending.^[3]

Largely ignored in the discus­sion of federal budget offsets is the opportunity to redeploy the budget of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to repair damage to New Orleans' levees and flood control system. As the federal agency chiefly responsible for flood control, its recent estimates ($4.1 billion to $5.1 billion) sug­gest that redeploying just 8 per­cent to 10 percent of the Corps' budget over 10 years would be sufficient to rebuild and improve the levees and flood control sys­tem to withstand a Category 5 storm.

Small Fraction for Flood Protection

In addition to the apparent lack of interest in finding spend­ing offsets and reallocations in the Corps' budget to fund flood control upgrades in the damaged areas of the Gulf states, Congress has devoted surprisingly little attention to investigating how the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for building the levees protect­ing New Orleans, has its annual budget allocated among competing purposes and projects. Further­more, there has been little discussion about how to adjust existing Corps spending patterns to meet new and urgent priorities. Indeed, a case could be made that a history of congressional and presiden­tial misallocation of the financial resources of the Army Corps of Engineers to expensive projects unrelated to flood and storm control-including many questionable earmarks sought and earned by lobbyists-may have been a contributing factor in the scope of the disaster.

Table 1 provides an approximation of how the Bush Administration proposed to allocate the Corps' $4.3 billion budget for fiscal year (FY) 2006.^[4] This table is only an approximation because neither the Corps nor Congress publishes a complete Corps budget that relates planned spending to specific objectives. Instead, spending is reported by "pro­cesses." None of the Corps' summary budget presen­tations provides information on the total amount that it spends each year on ecosystem restoration, ports and harbors, or its "beach nourishment" pro­gram, a series of projects that dredge and pump sand from nearby oceans and bays onto eroded resort beaches to protect vacation homes and a small seg­ment of the seasonal resort industry.^[5]

What is immediately apparent from Table 1 is that flood and storm control are a relatively modest part of the President's FY 2006 budget proposal for the Corps, accounting for just 12 percent of the proposed budget. For Corps spending in Louisi­ana, the distribution has been only slightly more favorable toward flood and storm control: From 2001 through 2005, Louisiana received $1.9 bil­lion in Corps spending for all projects, but just 20 percent ($380.4 million) was allocated to flood control projects related to New Orleans on Lake Pontchartrain, the West Bank and Vicinity, and Southeast Louisiana.^[6]

Congressional Earmarks Misallocate Corps Money

To put New Orleans flood control spending in better perspective, flood control spending for the three areas related to New Orleans totaled $72.2 million in FY 2005.^[7] Yet during the same period, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) used her influence to require, by way of the Iraq emergency spending bill, the Corps to reconsider its earlier analysis that led it to reject a $194 million project to deepen the Port of Iberia, 70 miles due west of New Orleans on the Intracoastal Waterway.^[8] Senator Landrieu also succeeded in getting a down payment of $750,000 for the New Iberia project in the FY 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations bill.^[9]

Senator Landrieu is not the only member of the Louisiana delegation who has successfully lured Corps projects to the state, although most of the projects were unrelated to levee rebuilding or strengthening. Among such projects funded was a new lock costing $748 million on the underuti­lized Industrial Canal in New Orleans (one of the canal's levees was breached by Katrina's storm surge), but the project had nothing to do with flood protection or levee improvement. The Corps' staff had determined that this project would be a waste of money, but the project was ultimately approved when "a barrage of 'Her­culean' lobbying (according to a port memo) by the Louisiana delegation persuaded the Clinton Administration to reduce the port's cost share from $90 million to $27 million. The project was justified by predictions of increasing ship traffic. But traffic has rapidly declined ever since."^[10]

During the first five years of the Bush Adminis­tration, Louisiana received more Corps spending than any other state: $1.9 billion compared to $1.4 billion for California, the second-place recipient. Unlike most other federal spending programs, the vast majority (roughly 85 percent) of the spending is earmarked by the Corps (and the White House) and the Congress for location-specific projects. In addition, unlike most other federal programs, which are structured as categorical grants to state and local governments that determine how to best spend the money, the Corps undertakes specific projects directly and budgets accordingly. None­theless, politics and lobbying, not merit, seem to account for many of the Corps' spending projects.

The Role of Lobbyists

Although what share of the Corps' projects is due to such influence is unknown, there is reason to believe that many of its projects are bought and sold in a marketplace controlled by Members of Con­gress, lobbyists, and clients, who work together to divert taxpayer dollars to pet projects. Many of the projects have little or no economic or safety value and are funded at the expense of projects that could add to the security of Americans living in regions that are vulnerable to storms and flooding.

The evidence suggests that the market for Army Corps of Engineers earmarks is fairly well orga­nized, and a U.S. Senate Web site provides a well-documented trail of earmark transaction prices that is every bit as informative as are the financial pages of the morning newspaper in providing the closing prices for stocks and bonds traded on major exchanges. In this case, however, the "exchange floor" is mostly in the better restaurants of Wash­ington, D.C., and the downtown offices of the city's leading lobbying firms. The "financial pages" for the earmark transactions are provided by the Secre­tary of the Senate and are publicly available on the Internet.^[11] This record is a list of all contracts between registered lobbyists and their clients seek­ing some favor or earmark in the Corps' budget, which Congress writes and passes each year.

At present, the Web site lists the reports of more than 2,000 such contracts that were signed between clients and lobbyists seeking earmarks or regulatory assistance from the Corps between 1999 and 2004. In fairness to the Corps, the earmarks for the most part are forced on it by congressional staff and the Senators and Representatives serving on the committees that are responsible for determin­ing the Corps' budget each year.^[12]

A sampling of reported contracts from the Secre­tary of the Senate's list shows that the lobbying firm of Alcalde and Fay charged Kinder Morgan Bulk Terminals, Inc., $40,000 to "[s]ecure funding for improvements to Port Sutton Channel" and that the City of Deerfield Beach, Florida, paid the firm $40,000 "[s]eeking an appropriation for beach replenishment." The lobbyist Morgan Rees was paid almost $10,000 to help the Georgia Port Authority obtain an "Authorization for Navigation Channel Improvements," while the Accord Group earned a similar amount from Ducks Unlimited for "Wetland Restoration activities conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with a focus on projects in Saginaw, MI."

Notwithstanding the commitment of Louisiana's congressional delegation to fight for the interests of their constituents, the Secretary of the Senate's Web site is replete with instances of the state's cities, par­ishes, and water authorities having to hire lobbyists to get it done. Typical are the Palmer Group, which received $10,800 from the West Jefferson Levee Dis­trict to get "funding for West Bank hurricane protec­tion project," and the North St. Charles County Missouri Levee District, which paid Gary Elmestad & Associates $20,000 to get the Corps to conduct design, planning, and study initiatives. These two firms are among dozens that provide solicitation ser­vices for flood control funding to Louisiana's local governments and authorities for a fee.

Of particular interest in the national market for Corps earmarks is the lobbying practice of Marlowe & Co. in Washington, D.C. The Senate site abounds with contract reports between Marlowe and many beach resort communities seeking money from the Corps for "beach nourishment" projects. As noted earlier, this is one of the many services the Corps offers, but it does not provide a breakout in its budget of how much it spends in total each year for this recreational purpose, which serves largely to enhance the value of the vacation homes owned by America's wealthier citizens. For example, the Senate site shows that the City of Solana Beach, California, paid the firm $20,000 for "beach restoration funding" and that the "American Shore and Beach Preservation Association" paid almost $10,000 for similar services, including advocacy before the Office and Management and Budget "to ensure that shore protection is not a low budget priority."

In a 2004 interview with The Hill, firm owner Howard Marlowe bragged: "We know beaches!" The article went on to note that the company earned more than $700,000 in 2003 and estimates that it has won more that $100 million in beach projects since it has been in the business.^[13] Even more revealing is Marlowe & Co.'s Web site, which promotes its services by providing prospective cli­ents with its success stories. In its beach nourish­ment practice, the firm provides 13 pages listing the 170 beach earmarks that it has secured for its clients since FY 1998.^[14]

Assuming that Marlowe is describing his com­pany's success accurately, one has to wonder exactly how his firm was allowed to participate so intimately in the congressional budgeting and appropriations process. At some point, some por­tion of each requested earmark becomes part of a House or Senate appropriations bill (or authoriza­tion bill). Once that bill is passed and signed into law, the money for the project is guaranteed, and the Members of Congress who endorsed the project respond by issuing press releases bragging about the money they have brought back to the district, while the lobbyists involved brag to current and prospective clients about the money that they have bought for their paying clients.

H. L. Mencken described this process of seek­ing favor when he wrote in 1936, "Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."^[15] But how­ever cynical the Sage of Baltimore may have been about government corruption during the New Deal, there is a much darker way of looking at this record of fiscal abuse by the current Congress. It raises profound questions about whether or not the congressional budget and appropriations pro­cess is still governed by the Constitution and Members of Congress.

In 2004, The Heritage Foundation uncovered an effort by a prominent lobbying firm offering to "sell" an earmark to a small town in Virginia. The firm approached the town manager and offered to secure a $3.5 million federal grant for a planned recreational facility in return for an 18-month contract at $5,000 per month. In effect, the lobby­ist was offering to sell taxpayer money to the town for 2.6 cents on the dollar,^[16] revealing how little value Congress places on the taxpayers' hard-earned dollars.

From a more fundamental perspective, this lob­byist was proposing to sell something that was not his to sell, and the fact that he believed that he could deliver on the promise indicates that some­thing is terribly wrong in Congress. The Constitu­tion reserves to Congress the exclusive power to appropriate money from the U.S. Treasury.^[17] How, then, did these lobbyists come by the same privi­lege? If Congress has outsourced the budget and appropriations process to Washington's lobbying community, who authorized the sale? Who on the committees approves these projects? Who puts the beach replenishment earmarks into the bill? And what do they get in return?

Congress Adds Its Influence to the Fray

The beach replenishment program is not the only low-priority Corps program that competes with more vital flood and storm control projects for scarce funding. As Table 1 notes, the Corps proposes to spend $268 million on recreational projects in FY 2006. Despite more pressing safety concerns, these and other low-priority projects are apparently quite popular with Members of Congress.

• In early July 2005, Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME) announced that the Corps would spend $150,000 to pro­tect Camp Ellis beaches and $100,000 for a reconnaissance study of the anadromous fisher­ies in the Penobscot River.
• At about the same time, Senators Lindsey Gra­ham (R-SC) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) announced that they had secured a $2.2 mil­lion earmark to repair the 129-year-old Morris Island Lighthouse.
• Senators Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Blanche Lin­coln (D-AR) took credit for a $10 million irri­gation project to facilitate rice production in their state.
• Senators Christopher Bond (R-MO) and James Talent (R-MO) announced that they had secured from the Corps' budget $60 million to improve fish and wildlife habitat on the Mis­souri River, $1.75 million for middle Missis­sippi habitat protection, $1 million for a riverfront "enhancement" for Kansas City, and $300,000 for the Confluence State Park.

As a result of congressional pork-barrel earmarks and the projects sold by the many lobbyists who spe­cialize in redirecting Corps spending to paying clients, the FY 2006 Senate appropriations bill included 618 earmarks costing $1.3 billion-about one-fourth of the Corps' proposed budget of $5.3 billion.^[18]

Retooling the Corps for a Post-Katrina Environment

On September 22, 2005, the Louisiana congres­sional delegation, led by Senator Landrieu and Sen­ator David Vitter (R-LA), introduced the Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Economic Recovery Act, a legislative proposal that would require the federal government to spend $250 billion to rebuild Loui­siana. One of the sponsors freely admitted on national television that the proposal was partly written by Washington lobbyists.^[19]

One provision of the act proposed that the Army Corps of Engineers spend $40 billion to upgrade the levees in the New Orleans area to Category 5 strength. Apparently, the Louisiana congressional delegation was unaware that the Corps had recently estimated that the cost of rebuilding the city's exist­ing levees and floodwalls to its former Category 3 level of protection would cost $1.6 billion and that upgrading them to withstand a Category 5 storm would cost an additional $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion. This comes to a total cost of $4.1 billion to $5.1 bil­lion-less than 13 percent of what the Louisiana del­egation proposed to spend.^[20]

Given the many low-priority projects and waste­ful earmarks that Congress has put in the Corps' budget, the New Orleans levee upgrade could eas­ily be accommodated without increasing overall spending simply by redeploying existing Corps financial resources to the higher priority of protect­ing American citizens from death and destruction. The levee upgrade could be accomplished in 10 years by postponing $410 million to $510 million per year of low-priority Corps projects. For FY 2006, this would amount to only 8 percent to 10 percent of the Corps' $5.3 billion budget as pro­posed by the Senate.

Senators could easily find sufficient offsets by delaying many of the earmarks and other low-prior­ity Corps spending for several years. For example, the $510 million per year to upgrade the levees is the same as the amount the Corps would spend in FY 2006 on aquatic ecosystems, 40 percent more than it would spend on recreation, and just two-thirds of the $750 million cost of building the underutilized lock on the Industrial Canal in New Orleans.

Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., is Herbert and Joyce Mor­gan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Insti­tute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Heritage Research Assistant Michelle Muccio provided valuable assistance in the preparation of this report.