COLUMN: With Mike Lee, the USU buck stops here
Mike Lee is being heralded as the champion of the common Utahn. His entire platform is upholding the Constitution, reining in federal spending, and supporting good old family values. He has strong support among the conservative body here on campus and he’s made his presence known at USU through debates.
But do USU students truly understand the implications of his win this upcoming November? Behind his almost-certain victory will be tens of millions of dollars’ worth of earmarks lost for Utah State University. For those of you who may not be political science majors – a great major by the way – an earmark determines where money already allocated by the federal government will be spent. What this means is the government already has set money aside for earmarks and politicians decide where to allocate the monies.
Let’s put USU in the grand scheme of earmarking. When Bob Bennett was in power he was our strongest voice in the Senate. As a member of the Appropriations Committee, Bennett consistently allocated money to our university. Since 2006, USU has received 73 million dollars directly from Bennett’s earmarks, including 25.8 million for this school year alone.
Those tens of millions of dollars went directly to our research programs. That meant student jobs were created, world-renowned cutting edge research was able to be conducted, and USU’s prestige increased.
But because Lee will be a freshman senator, he has little chance of taking Bennett’s place on the powerful Appropriations Committee. As soon as Lee is elected, our one and only link to these tens of millions of dollars is lost forever. This will mean almost-certain death for some research programs here at USU. Our education as a whole will now be valued less because we will not have as much funding to maintain our edge over other competitive schools.
But wait, it gets worse.
One of Mike Lee’s pledges was to hold a yearlong moratorium on earmarks. This pledge was nothing short of a political calculation for the November election. He wants to appease the powerful Utah Tea Party movement and by making this pledge, he is courting votes.
But by promising to refuse federal money, he is going to hurt Utah State University during what I firmly believe to be our most vulnerable moment.
We are currently experiencing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and USU budgets are going to be cut even further. The rainy day fund cannot bail us like it did last year. Refusing to take earmarks is not only counter-intuitive, but rather foolish.
An earmark doesn’t determine if money will be spent at all – that decision was made long ago. Rather, earmarks only determine where the money will be spent. If Mike Lee upholds his moratorium and refuses to accept the money for Utah, it would simply be spent someplace else instead.
We Utahns pay federal taxes and if there is the opportunity to take some of that money back we should take it. Promising to hold a one-year moratorium on earmarks does nothing to fix government over-spending. Rather, the issue of earmarks is only being used as a political gimmick to gain Mike Lee more votes at the expense of USU students. He is essentially throwing us under the bus for the sake of getting himself elected. This is wrong and we must call him out on it. Mike Lee is not the champion of the common Utahn as he makes himself out to be. Utah State University needs a voice in the Senate but I am afraid that Mike Lee will not be that voice.
Justin Hinh is a sophomore in political science. He can be reached at justinusn10@gmail.com