From today's electronic version of the "Chronicle of Higher Education" --

Democrats Put Pork Lovers in Academe on a Diet

Congress plans to give close scrutiny to earmarks, freezing them in 2007

By JEFFREY BRAINARD

College officials are bracing for some hard braking on one of their favorite gravy trains. The Democratic majority in Congress plans to increase oversight of earmarks, the noncompetitive grants that members steer to academic institutions, and to decrease sharply their number in the 2007 fiscal year.  

 . . .

At the University of Southern Mississippi, officials hope they will succeed in persuading federal agencies to continue to finance earmarked projects included in prior years' appropriations bills.

The university, which obtained $102-million from all sources for research in 2006, was promised about $30-million in set-asides in all of the 2007 appropriations bills, and has been one of the top recipients of such funds in past years. Most of the 2007 money was for equipment to help researchers develop better polymers and to improve the aquaculture of shrimp, and only about 10 percent was slated for salaries.

Bridging the Gap

The institution can probably tap other sources of money in the short term to minimize any disruption to the work, says Cecil D. Burge, vice president for research and economic development at the University of Southern Mississippi. But he predicts that officials at the Commerce Department and other federal agencies will not risk incurring the wrath of Congress members by diverting money formerly spent on these projects to other priorities. Besides, he says, his university seeks earmarked funds only for projects that it knows fit a priority of the agency directed to provide the funds.

The new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, is renowned for his support of earmarks — although he also announced the earmark moratorium. One of Mississippi's senators, Thad Cochran, is the panel's senior Republican.

"Those agencies know that in many cases, they'll go back to that appropriations committee in next year's budget," Mr. Burge says. "I may be naïve, but I simply refuse to believe" that earmarks will just go away "cold turkey," he says.