House GOP, Dems try to end ‘earmarks'

Brenham Banner

WASHINGTON — House GOP leaders are pushing rank-and-file Republicans to break their addiction to pet projects by going cold turkey and giving up the long-cherished practice of directing federal dollars to their home districts.

The move is an election-year appeal to voters frustrated with Washington’s free-spending ways and seeks to trump new reforms announced earlier Wednesday by Democratic leaders.

Democrats announced they would ban the much-criticized practice of using annual spending bills to direct pet projects to companies that often return the favor with campaign contributions. Democratic leaders considered — and dismissed — the idea of a complete earmark ban.

The competing maneuvers come as both parties are seeking every possible advantage heading into midterm elections in which Republicans stand to make major gains and possibly retake control of the House. Earmarks are but one reason Congress suffers from abysmal approval ratings, however, and lawmakers in both parties engage in the practice.

“The time has come for House Republicans to adopt an immediate, unilateral moratorium on all earmarks,” said Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and nine other GOP leaders in a joint statement Wednesday evening.

In the Senate, however, the old guard in both parties was having none of it.

“I don’t believe this policy or ceding authority to the executive branch on any spending decision is in the best interests of the Congress or the American people,” Inouye said.

Earlier Wednesday, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations panel, told reporters that he hopes the ban on earmarks to companies that make profits will mean 1,000 fewer earmarks and break the linkage between campaign contributions and earmarks that has sparked criticism and resulted in ethics probes of several lawmakers.

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) called for an end to earmarks in their present form.

“If Chairman Obey and the Democrats were truly interested in stopping wasteful spending they would join me in overhauling the earmark system,” said McCaul, whose district includes Washington County.

“Two years ago I took a stand against this broken and corrupt process by refusing to participate until it is reformed. Americans deserve a real commitment to stop spending their hard-earned money on wasteful special interest pork projects.

“I will continue to encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in not requesting earmarks until the system is 100 percent transparent as to the sponsor and recipient and until each earmark is subject to an up or down vote on the House floor.”

McCaul, a former federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Unit, stopped requesting earmarks at the beginning of 2008.

He has also led the “No Monuments to Me” effort, which has successfully banned the funding of various projects named after sitting members of Congress.

The election-year moves in the House come after the ethics committee investigated seven members of a Pentagon spending panel for rewarding earmarks to companies whose executives and hired lobbyists showered them with campaign cash. The panel found no linkage and absolved the lawmakers.

But the move brought strong opposition from Senate Appropriations panel chair Inouye, D-Hawaii, a long-standing defender of earmarking. He issued a tartly worded response defending the current system and calling Obey’s move “quizzical.”

“Congress cannot ignore its constitutional responsibilities to approve the allocation of federal funds,” said GOP Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, one of Congress’ most aggressive practitioners of earmarking.

House Republicans will vote among themselves today on whether to give up earmarks.

The subject of earmarks has over the years brought criticism of Congress that’s often generated by earmarks such as the $200 million-plus “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska, a proposed but later abandoned bridge connecting the city of Ketchikan to an island with about 50 residents and an airport.

The most commonly accepted definition of an earmark is a specific project that’s not requested by the president but inserted into one of the annual spending bills by a member of Congress. They come in countless varieties, like grants to police departments, improvements to military bases, renovations to historic buildings and research grants for home-district colleges.