Press Room
News Stories
Opinion: Ethics Reform Bill Exempts Most Earmarks
By Amanda B. Carpenter
Human Events
January 11, 2007
Congress is poised to pass a broad sweeping ethics reform bill to end the “culture of corruption” epitomized by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, but Senate Republicans say it’s a toothless bill because the new restrictions would not apply to the large majority of pet projects secured by members.
“The way our bill is now will only apply to every five out of every 100 earmarks,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R.-S.C.).
Both the House and Senate versions of the bill seek to increase transparency by identifying an earmark’s sponsor, but the Senate version would not apply to federal projects secured by a lawmaker. A guide to earmark reform tracking these bills made available by Citizens Against Government Waste said under these rules, “Projects such as digitization of Department of Defense (DOD) manuals, which helped land former Rep. Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham in jail, would not require sponsor identification because the funds were directed to DOD, not a specific company.”
The standing bill also would not apply to earmarks that were added into conference reports.
To make earmark reform more comprehensive, DeMint said the Senate should adopt language from the House version of the bill crafted by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.). “And, it’s not often I agree with her,” he said.
DeMint said the Senate bill lacked a clear definition of an earmark. He said, “They way they’ve defined them over on the House side, what Nancy Pelosi did is include all the various types of earmarks. Over here, we don’t define something that is federal as an earmark and the definitions are key in conference as well.”
On January 9, Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.) wrote a hard-hitting letter to the Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman encouraging the White House to veto the bill if the House language pertaining to earmarks was not adopted.
DeMint agreed with Coburn’s demand. “I think the President needs to get out in front with what he will accept because it would keep us from just spinning our wheels and sending something over there.”
“Transparency by itself can’t work,” DeMint said. “The process has been flawed in that you don’t get a vote on it in committee or on the floor and it’s all added in conference it doesn’t matter how transparent it is after that because it comes back and it can’t be amended. There’s general agreement on what do to, but if we agree on something with not defining earmarks we’ve wasted our time.”
Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Okla.) said that although transparency is good, he said many lawmakers are eager to take credit for earmarks as a way to gain political capital. “They want their name on them,” he said. “So, I don’t see how that’s going to accomplish all that much.”
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R.-Tex.) may be one of them. “I’m always pleased with what I put in as earmarks and I’m happy for the public to know about it,” she said. But she did say she thought it was “perfectly fine” to broaden the definition to include federal projects. She said, “I don’t think I have a problem with transparency or anything. I’ve done Corps of Engineers and I’m happy to let people know that we are getting drainage and protection for the Trinity River in Dallas. So I don’t have a problem with transparency at all.”
Another, Sen. Norm Coleman (R.-Minn.), said earmarks were not the problem but “earmark abuse” was. “It’s the abuse of earmarks and the way lobbyists line their pockets with special interest that has got to stop,” he said. “What you are seeing now is an end to earmark abuse.”
In addition to seeking clarifications related to the definitions of an earmark, Republican budget hawks are drafting amendments to crack down on pork-barrel spending. Sen. Judd Gregg (R.-N.H.) is working with DeMint on an amendment to give the President enhanced line-item rescission power that’s strongly supported by the OMB. Coburn also plans to propose an amendment to ban earmarks that benefit family members of members of Congress, or family members of Senate staff.
|
|
