Okay, I have to admit that I thought that Chairman Obey’s bluster about not including earmarks was going fall by the wayside during the Memorial Day recess. I figured he was just trying to give the committee some maneuvering room during the committee consideration of the appropriations bills, but after Rep. Obey’s remarks yesterday, he seems to be committed to sending transparency back to the Dark Ages.

We’ve taken a peek at the three appropriations bills that have passed the Committee so far (Homeland Security, Energy & Water, and Military Construction). Each them included a “nope, no earmarks here” clause at the end. They should have added “at least not yet.”

Here’s what CQ quoted Chairman Obey as saying during the Energy & Water Appropriations bill mark-up:

“Members will be able to write this committee if they have any objection to an earmark the conference committee is putting in, and the sponsor of that earmark will have an opportunity to respond to any criticism.”

This plan is nothing more than a kangaroo court for considering earmarks. A system where lawmakers have to send an earmark opposition letter to a closed door smoked filled conference committee room is not transparent, not open and it is the antithesis of the Democrats election platform. Robert’s Rules of Order don’t describe the legislative process for considering and voting on letters. How can members offer, debate and vote on amendments regarding how our government spends our tax dollars. Under this system they can’t. Conference reports are not amendable. So the only way to remove objectionable earmarks is to shame the select group of conference committee members. Fat chance of that.

For quite some time, the appropriators have been pointing at others as the real source of earmarking problems. They have pointed out that the Bridge to Nowhere was an authorization earmark, or that the Administration earmarks too. We agree. But the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee and Armed Services both released lists of their earmarks in the Water Resources Development Act and FY08 Defense Authorization bill. The Administration plans on tracking earmarks and earlier released an exhaustive list of FY05 earmarks for comparison purposes.

If Chairman Obey is concerned that they have not been able to adequately vet the earmark requests, fine, slow down the process until you are ready for the rest of Congress and the public to look at them. The appropriations committee is asking the public to trust them about the earmarks. But you have to earn trust and after years of abuse, all the committee has earned is greater scrutiny and skepticism.

Below is an editorial from the Wisconsin State Journal – a publication in Chairman Obey’s backyard – that is singing our song. And below that, the CQ story. As always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Pork-barrel reform should stay on track

A Wisconsin State Journal editorial
June 6, 2007

In six months David Obey has gone from hero to villain.

Late last year the Wisconsin Democrat who heads the powerful House Appropriations Committee helped to spark an effort to save taxpayers billions of dollars by reining in pork-barrel spending.

But Obey is now dodging the very reforms he helped to generate.

At stake is congressional earmarking, the process that allows lawmakers to slip into legislation pet projects that curry favor, or return favors, back home.

Earmarks have their place. But in recent years, they have outgrown that place. The number of earmarks has exploded from 4,000 in 1994 to 13,500 in 2005. Those 13,500 earmarks added $19 billion to federal spending.

Furthermore, as the number of earmarks has grown, so has the potential for corruption. Rep. Randy Cunningham, R-Calif., resigned in 2005 after admitting that he took bribes to earmark military contracts for businesses in his district.

In 2006 Obey helped to put a moratorium on earmarks until the House adopted reforms. With reforms passed earlier this year, Congress is poised to control earmarks by exposing them to more scrutiny during the lawmaking process, allowing discovery and discussion to weed out waste.

But Obey is now swerving in a different direction. He announced that because more than 30,000 earmark requests had been made so far this year, it was impossible to determine which had merit.

His solution was to wait until the end of the lawmaking process, where earmarks would be submitted in closed-door sessions of the committee that negotiates the differences between House and Senate versions of bills.

With this maneuver, Obey would enhance his own power but prevent the public and most lawmakers from questioning earmarks until it is too late.

Obey is trying to justify his means by claiming he is aimed at a good end — keeping pork out of spending bills.

But as earmark reform advocate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., stated, if the reforms adopted earlier this year were three steps forward, Obey has taken six steps backward.

Obey should drop his plan to deal with earmarks in last-minute negotiations behind closed doors. He should stick to the reforms, and communities should understand that they can no longer expect their senators and representatives to slip dubious local projects into spending bills.

With the campaign for reform building momentum, this is no time for backsliding.

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What’s an earmark?

An earmark allows a member of Congress to reserve money for a local project as an addition to a larger spending bill.

What’s the problem?

Pork-barrel spending. Not all earmarks are pork. But through the pork that earmarks deliver, taxpayers pay for bridges, museums and cultural grants of dubious merit, military projects the Defense Department doesn’t want and other wasteful items.

What are solutions?

More scrutiny, checks and balances. Earmark reforms would require lawmakers to identify the earmarks they sponsor, their purpose and cost and who benefits. They would also have to certify that they gain no personal benefit. A presidential line-item veto would also help by permitting the president to strike wasteful items.

CQ TODAY
June 6, 2007 – 9:54 p.m.

White House, Hill Trade Charges on Earmarks

By David Clarke, CQ Staff

Democratic congressional leaders and the Bush administration are escalating their efforts to outdo one another in policing spending earmarks.

The prize as this appropriations season moves into high gear is being able to take credit for cleaning up a process that both sides now say has gotten out of control.

Defensiveness over directed project funding has grown as earmarks are increasingly viewed as signs of corruption and waste. During the 2006 election campaign, Democrats pointed to earmark abuses in the Republican-controlled Congress to suggest that the GOP had abandoned fiscal discipline.

House Democrats are trying to show they have a tighter rein by imposing a new rule requiring disclosure of the names of lawmakers who requested each earmark. But Republicans criticize the Democrats’ plan to begin moving spending bills without earmarks and promising that earmarks will be added and sponsors disclosed only later in the process.

House Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey, D-Wis., said Wednesday he will provide time for earmarks to be reviewed once he is ready to add them to the spending bills.

Obey is also trying to deflect some of the heat over earmarks onto the administration. “There is virtually no attention paid to the executive branch that directs far more funding than the Congress,” he said.

The spending bills the full Appropriations panel began marking up this week include language intended to show that the executive branch also requests funding of specific projects and itself controls through grants and contracts how billions of dollars are spent. “Earmarking or directed spending of federal dollars does not begin with the Congress,” reads boilerplate language in the committee report accompanying the Military Construction-VA spending bill. “It begins with the executive branch.”

The language Obey is using reflects a lesson from Civics 101: Under the Constitution, the executive branch requests funding, while Congress decides how much should be spent and how.

Appropriators contend it is their job — not that of agency officials — to determine how federal funds are spent. The language Obey is using also reflects appropriators’ annoyance that they take most of the recent criticism of earmarks.

Obey has made a point at committee meetings of noting that former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif. (1991-2005), who was convicted on bribery charges, got into trouble by pressuring a federal agency to award a contract, not by earmarking spending in an appropriations bill.

Appropriators also frequently point out that the much-maligned congressional earmark for an Alaskan project dubbed the “Bridge to Nowhere” was in an authorization bill.

The White House has become caught up in the issue as Obey has sought to shift some of the perceived responsibility for earmarks. Democrats say the executive branch awards too many contracts without competition.

A spokesman for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said agency budget requests for specific projects or grants are based on a competitive process. “From the administration side, we’re allocating funding based on a merit- based process,” he said.

OMB also has made a point that the administration has been more open than Congress about its funding decisions. The president’s budget proposals, the White House notes, have for years been available to anyone online.

The White House is also stepping up its pressure on Congress to reduce earmarks. Bush has asked that the number of funding earmarks be cut in half from the fiscal 2005 count of 13,942.

“The notion is not that every earmark is bad or that there shouldn’t be any earmarks,” White House Budget Director Rob Portman told reporters last week. “The notion is that this has gotten out of control.

Portman directed federal agencies last week to tally the amount of earmarks in spending bills as soon as they are passed.

Earmarks TBA

During Wednesday’s Appropriations Committee markup of the fiscal 2008 Energy-Water spending bill, Obey attempted to counter GOP criticism of his plan to withhold earmarks until after the House passes spending measures. The chairman said he will not add earmarks during conference negotiations with the Senate without allowing House members to review and question the allocations.

“Members will be able to write this committee if they have any objection to an earmark the conference committee is putting in, and the sponsor of that earmark will have an opportunity to respond to any criticism,” Obey said.

But Obey’s plan will prevent lawmakers from attempting to remove earmarks that appropriators eventually put into the bills. Conference reports are not subject to amendment.

Earmarks are being left out of the bills because the Appropriations staff has not had time this year to adequately review lawmakers’ earmark requests, Obey said. The chairman contends the staff has been too busy working on the omnibus fiscal 2007 appropriations (PL 110-5) enacted in mid-February and with the fiscal 2007 war supplemental (PL 110-28) enacted last month.

The top House Republican appropriator, Jerry Lewis of California, repeated on Wednesday his criticism of Obey’s plan and called it “an irresponsible dereliction of the committee’s duty.”