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Republican Clash Over Earmarks Gets Ugly

By Martin Kady II

Congressional Quarterly

May 22, 2006

For much of this year, conservatives in Congress have been girding for a showdown over earmarks, a debate they believe represents a battle for the fiscal heart and soul of the Republican Party.

Now the fight is on — and it isn’t pretty.

House conservatives, buoyed by public opinion against “pork” projects, have launched a sort of guerrilla warfare, and Republican leaders are struggling to calm a feud between the cost-cutters and the appropriators.

The Senate showdown over earmarks may come later this summer when that chamber takes up appropriations bills.

The first shot came May 19, when Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, used procedural moves to strip $507 million from the Military Quality of Life-VA spending bill (HR 5385), which funds Pentagon construction projects and veterans’ programs.

The effort created a couple of chaotic hours on the House floor, with Republicans publicly fighting among themselves. It was a major blow to the usually confident appropriators, who can with the stroke of a pen take millions from a member’s congressional district. It also showed that fiscal conservatives are unafraid to take on earmarks even when the battle involves the sacred cow of military funding.

Majority Leader John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, admitted he could have protected the funds from being deleted with special floor rules for debate. But he left them exposed because appropriators had used emergency funding instead of regular appropriations to pay for the military projects. Boehner said he wants to end that practice so that emergency money is for urgent needs, not long-term construction projects.

“There was a long debate about it,” Boehner said. “The decision was made to let [stripping the money] stand.”

More Battles Ahead

Hensarling’s effort was the first of dozens of potential floor maneuvers that fiscal conservatives will use in the coming weeks to highlight what they see as wasteful spending.

The battle pits the increasingly influential Republican Study Committee (RSC) against the more traditionally powerful appropriators, dividing the GOP and threatening the entire appropriations process.

Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, a California Republican, criticized his conservative brethren, saying, “we have members unilaterally identifying paragraphs they are not pleased with” and removing them from the bills.

“Please don’t come out here and lecture us,” Ray LaHood, R-Ill., a member of the Appropriations Committee, warned Hensarling. “You picked the wrong bill to have the earmark fight.”

Among the leaders in the movement is Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., whose libertarian streak and disdain for earmarks has made him a hero of groups opposing what they see as government waste.

“Hopefully we’ll shed some badly needed light on this process,” Flake said. “Earmarks are the currency of corruption . . . and we need an airing of this. This process is tainting us all.”

“Currency of corruption” is an argument that may resonate because of the sensitivities aroused by the prosecution of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif. (1991-2005), who pleaded guilty to using earmarks to set aside money for defense contractors who were bribing him.

Gimmick Decried

Earmark opponents complained that appropriators had used a budget gimmick to evade the bill’s spending cap and make room for their pet projects by designating $507 million in other spending as an “emergency.” There was broad support for those other projects, which had been requested by the White House, but instead of trying to kill the earmarks they actually opposed, opponents attacked the “gimmick” by raising a point of order against the emergency spending. That allowed them to kill the extra spending without a recorded vote when their point of order was sustained.

However, the tactic put conservatives in the difficult spot of attacking popular military spending to make a point about earmarks.

In the future, appropriations aides say they expect conservatives will get only a few dozen votes if they try to strike at specific member earmarks. “I don’t get the sense that there’s a lot of support behind this,” said John Scofield, a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee. “I think they’ll lose every vote.”

But Flake said the Agriculture appropriations bill (HR 5384), chock full of earmarks for farm programs, and the Energy-Water spending measure (HR 5427) will be the next targets when the House takes up the bills this week.

“Stay tuned, there will be more fireworks,” said Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, chairman of the RSC, a caucus of fiscal conservatives.

Whether the conservatives can sustain this momentum is unclear. The House passed a lobbying and ethics bill (HR 4975) on May 3 that includes provisions aimed at curtailing earmarking, but that legislation appears to have stalled.

Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., who is both an appropriator and an RSC member, indicated he comes down more on the side of spenders, not the savers, when it comes to earmarks.

“The most logical reform is that every member should be able to put their name on the earmark request and defend it on the front page of every paper in the country,” Wamp said. “While well intended, the people who want to get rid of earmarks are not serving the institution of Congress.”

That won’t other deter RSC members such as Flake, Hensarling, Pence or John Shadegg, R-Ariz.

As other appropriations bills arrive on the House floor, Flake or another RSC member plans to ask for a colloquy with an earmark sponsor, ask why the project is in the bill, ask whether any sole-source contracts are involved and question whether the earmark’s beneficiaries have contributed any money to the sponsors’ campaign.

“The more light is shed on this, the more upsetting it will be” for some members, Flake said.

Senate Example

But even if he loses on lopsided votes, Flake can look at Tom Coburn’s efforts in the Senate for inspiration. Last October, when Coburn, R-Okla., tried to remove funding for the now famous Alaskan “bridge to nowhere,” he only won 15 votes. In April, Coburn had made progress in his earmark fight, garnering 47 votes in a losing effort to remove funding for a $700 million project to relocate a section of Mississippi railroad.

Later this summer, when the Senate begins to take up appropriations bills, Coburn will be able to test the waters again as he tries to strip earmarks from spending bills.

Rather than identify the originators of earmarks, Coburn’s goal is to debate the merit of the earmarks, said spokesman John Hart.

Coburn has had rhetorical backing from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a longtime critic of congressional spending, but he is still a long way from persuading a majority of senators to pick apart spending bills and delete earmarks.

In the House, Flake anticipates more confrontation this week, but not necessarily victories. “I don’t know what to expect,” Flake said. “We’ve never done this.”