I have thoroughly enjoyed the recent three part series written by Tom Barry on our Congressman Silvestre Reyes. However, I think there are some pictures to be painted with numbers along with some clarifications of what happened when and who was in charge of making it “rain” here on the border.

The cold hard fact is that since 2004, Reyes’ border security conference has done little or nothing that he wanted it to do. More importantly, it hasn’t done what WE wanted it to do. We have had several major issues with border policies and they remain unsolved today.

We’re still not happy with the wait times on the bridges, which is attributed to them being simply understaffed. He hasn’t fixed that in the time he has sat in his oversight position as Chair of the Intelligence Committee. A position, mind you, that was sold to us as one that had enormous influence. He was not able to stop the border fence construction that was very unpopular among El Pasoans, either. You would think that the “rainmaker” could have at least slowed the construction of the fence once his party held the house and senate under their control with a lame duck president swimming through a rough sea of unpopularity. It did not happen. Now it’s there and it isn’t going away. So much for his influence over border policy.

The articles by Mr. Barry detail the many important people who came for the border security conferences, but showed very little in the way of influencing policy. The gist I got was that he was successful at holding meetings, not effecting policy changes.

As for the establishment of the border security and policy centers at UTEP, I have to point out the obvious here. UTEP may be the shoe-in for those centers given that they are the only university in the entire continental United States that is yards, not miles from the border with Mexico where they are killing people not in the dozens, but by the thousands. To publicly fund a Mexican border security and policy research center at the University of Michigan would be counter intuitive to most sane people.

On the issue of who brought what to El Paso, we must also talk about BRAC. Neither Congressmen Reyes nor the business community was solely responsible for the Ft. Bliss’s extreme growth. Owe that growth to strategic planning by military officials inside the Pentagon who realized that not only is Ft. Bliss one of the largest military bases in the world, it just so happens to have geographic features that are almost identical to the ones our troops are most likely to be fighting in the near future (middle east).

Believe it or not, most of what the military does is packaged in their budget proposals that are presented in committees not related to anything Congressman Reyes has jurisdiction over. Very rarely do any elected officials get into the business of doing the military’s strategic planning. To say that Reyes somehow had any say over where a bunch of generals in 2002 thought the most strategic training base for infantry would be, is to stretch the truth pretty far.

I will, however, admit that he has not stood in their way during the expansion of Ft. Bliss that is a godsend to the construction industry in the El Paso area.

So how does one “make it rain” power, money and influence? What do “rainmakers” bring home to their districts? Is our congressman truly a “rainmaker?”

Before we get to that, let’s go over some numbers.

Just in case you didn’t know, there are 435 members of congress. Each of them represent roughly 700,000 Americans right now (that grows as the population grows). Their districts are cut by their state legislatures in a process called “gerrymandering.” The idea here is that each individual member is representing the same amount of Americans, roughly.

Ideally we have an equal shot at getting federal tax dollars earmarked for our district. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. However, Mr. Barry tells us that Reyes is in fact a “rainmaker,” and provides us with a bunch of cash and influence we wouldn’t have if he weren’t so important. So what are the numbers?

It’s a good thing that Opensecrets.org started tracking earmarks for the individual members in 2008. It’s a useful tool when tracking the effectiveness or wastefulness of your congressman. So, where does our congressman rank in the big picture?

In 2008 Reyes ranked 192 out of 435 in the earmarks category. He brought in $24,077,000 in earmarks. (Here’s the link http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/earmarks.php?cycle=2007&type=H).

The top “rainmaker” that session was Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) who brought in a tiny bit more than Reyes with $176,397,200. Maybe that’s not a fair comparison. Maybe we should compare Reyes to the next closest geographical congressional district. That would be Rep. Ciro Rodriguez who in that session was just getting his feet wet again after losing his election in 2005. He beat Henry Bonilla in 2007 to regain his seat, but had lost much of his earned seniority in the process. He ranked 69 out of 435, and “rained” $52,219,000 on his district. That’s 123 spots and $28 million better than our congressman who was given the honor and power of chairing the Intelligence Committee.

In 2009 Reyes moved all the way up to 143 out of 435 with $34,031,839 in earmarks. (Here’s the link http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/earmarks.php?cycle=2008&type=H)

Representative Ciro Rodriguez moved down to 83 out of 435 with $48,509,393 in earmarks. The big winner this year so far has been David Loebsack (D-Iowa) with $217,293,500 going to his pet projects.

Reyes hasn’t even managed to scrape together more money in earmarks than fringe Republican candidate and Texas congressman Ron Paul. Congressman Paul has $80,775,750 despite his position as a thorn in both parties’ respective sides. It’s also unclear if Paul has backed away from his assertion that the American government was behind the 9/11 attacks. Yes, our congressman has less power than that guy.

Giving Reyes the higher of the two numbers and dividing that by 700,000 will give you $48.61 per constituent. Rep. Loebsack is “raining” $310.41 per constituent.

Are we getting a good return on our investment into our government (taxes)? If you assumed that we only had 50,000 workers in this district paying $1,000 a year in federal taxes and fees, we’d generate $50 million for the federal government. Both of those numbers are embarrassingly low and so far from reality, it boggles the mind to think about what we actually do pay out and never receive back because our “rainmaker” is in a severe drought.

I’m no fan of earmarks for the sake of waste. Bridges to nowhere, money to study horse sex and other odious expenditures of taxpayer dollars should be eliminated from any budget. However, our district is in desperate need of at least receiving back the federal funds it pays into the system. We are one of the poorest districts in the country. We actually do have infrastructure needs attributed to our growth here in the federal sector both in the border security and military sectors. You can’t tell me that Rep. Loebsack’s Iowa district is absorbing the amount of federally initiated and operated growth that El Paso currently is.

The case for receiving back what we pay in ought to be simple to make for the “rainmaker” Mr. Barry describes. Meetings are great, but funding to support our district’s needed adaptation to the explosion in the presence of federal concerns is critical. Congressman Reyes must “make it rain” the dollars needed to keep up with the growth of the government industries that do not just serve El Paso, but the entire country. He has not proven himself worthy of that task yet.

Or perhaps I am wrong and Mr. Barry’s reference to Reyes being a “rainmaker” was a nod to the fact that since 2004 El Paso has experienced higher than average rainfall. You be the judge. (link http://www.srh.noaa.gov/epz/climat/rain/elpmonthlyprecip.shtml)