Faced with a choice between doing the right thing and doing the easy thing, voters want Congress to do what is right. Unfortunately, too many lawmakers believe cutting federal spending, particularly within their own districts, is an impossible task. The dilemma for Members of Congress is the false choice between shortchanging constituents and shortchanging America.

Running for office in 2008, I told the people of Utah I would seek to change the way we do business in Washington, D.C. Nowhere has that promise ruffled more feathers than in the fight over federal earmarking. On this crucial issue, most lawmakers have taken an all-or-nothing approach to the problem.

Earmarks—lawmaker-requested spending provisions that bypass the merit-based funding process—are a beloved institution in the United States Congress. They enable lawmakers to bring home federal dollars, take credit for generating jobs in their districts, pick winners and losers, and elicit campaign contributions. Local elected officials also love earmarks. Mayors and county commissioners get the credit for bringing a new project to their community without the responsibility of having to pay for it.

Despite a record $12-trillion debt, Taxpayers for Common Sense reports that total spending on earmarks remained unchanged in 2010 (Alarkon, 2010). Renovations of historic buildings, theaters, and music halls will run taxpayers millions of dollars this year—even as the unemployment rate hovers around 10%. Although we are projected to soon be spending more than $1 billion a day in interest on our debt, Congress still found $250,000 for a farmers market in Monroe County, Kentucky. They found $750,000 for the World Food Prize in Des Moines, Iowa (FY10 Earmarks Database, 2010). These are just two of the more than 10,000 earmarks that I voted against in the 2010 federal budget.

Lawmakers who wish to reform the process have traditionally been left with two untenable choices: shortchange America by participating in a corrupt system, or shortchange constituents by refusing to bring back any of the dollars paid by taxpayers. This dilemma makes earmark reform seem impossible.

That’s why I opted to chart an alternative path. The House is charged with a constitutional duty, role, and responsibility to appropriate funds. But how we do it is paramount because people have lost confidence in Congress. Not every earmark is abusive. For example, nearly 70% of my state’s lands are under federal ownership. There are legitimate reasons to seek federal dollars to handle costs associated with those lands. Yet the people of Utah didn’t send me here to fire up the favor factory. I promised voters I would not ask for an earmark until there was greater openness, transparency, and reform. I promised not to ask for an appropriations earmark in 2009 or 2010. I am doing the same for the FY 2011 budget. I promised I would work to raise the bar and forge a new path.

In August 2009, after months of public input and discussions, I introduced guidelines (Chaffetz, 2009) that seek to distinguish between the legitimate federal projects the Constitution empowers us to support and those projects which fall outside of our scope. With little political will in Congress to address earmark abuses in a meaningful way, I felt the best way forward was to start with a single office—mine.

Four simple changes to the earmark process would eliminate billions of dollars in potentially wasteful spending without compromising the Constitutional obligation of Congress to authorize legitimate federal projects. First, we must eliminate earmarks awarded to for-profit companies. Second, we should require a federal nexus be shown before projects can be funded. Third, we must commit to provide greater transparency. Finally, in the 112th Congress, I have called for a policy that would exclude those serving on the Appropriations Committee from requesting earmarks.

While some argue that earmarks represent a small fraction of the federal budget, this fraction is perhaps the easiest 1% to address. When Congress is finally brave enough to deal with entitlement reform, the American people will want to know that Congress cut its own entitlements before we sought to cut theirs.

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