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'There are going to be weeds to dig through’

By Jim Snyder

The Hill

January 30, 2007

It may be a coincidence, perhaps like the correlation between rising carbon dioxide emissions and increasing global temperatures, but K Street’s growth has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the number of congressional earmarks.

There were about 16,000 targeted budget lines in spending measures for fiscal year 2005, up from just a few thousand in the early 1990s.
Washington’s lobbyist population, a few thousand two decades ago, has ballooned to more than 15,000.

So this week may be a sad one for K Street, with Democrats poised to pass a spending measure they say won’t include pork, the food lobbyists feed on. Or maybe not.

The continuing resolution was set for release after The Hill’s deadline yesterday, but an appropriations aide said it likely would be more than 100 pages.

That is bigger than the standard continuing resolution, which usually includes only top-line budget numbers based on the lowest amount of three options: the budget line passed the previous year, the budget passed by the House or the budget passed by the Senate.

The aide insists that earmarks won’t be included, and that the number of pages is needed to explain broader budget adjustments from appropriations numbers Congress settled on a year ago.

But Steve Ellis of the Taxpayers for Common Sense, which advocates for earmark reform, is skeptical.

“There are going to be a lot of weeds that we are going to have to dig through,” Ellis said.

There will be fewer earmarks than in past years, however, a trend that could continue given new rules the House and Senate have pushed to scrutinize more closely member earmark requests.

Democrats, left with a budget mess by Republicans, could have wrapped up the remaining nine appropriations bills into an omnibus that would likely have run in excess of 1,000 pages and many more earmarks.

Universities and other research entities that often benefit from congressional largesse are particularly nervous about the process. The American Geological Institute sent a letter to Congress urging members to fund the National Science Foundation (NSF) at a level congressional appropriators included in their bills last year — never passed — rather than the lower amount of 2006 funding levels. The administration, the House and the Senate all would have increased NSF funding levels by 7 percent.

The microchip industry is also scrambling for extra money (see related story).

Democrats adopted the continuing resolution approach to avoid the weeks of debate it likely would have taken to settle remaining differences in the nine spending bills that remain to be passed. The White House will send the fiscal year 2008 budget request to Capitol Hill next week, and the new Democratic majority is eager to move on to their own priorities.

Ellis hopes that doesn’t include a pile of congressional pork.

If this CR coupled with greater earmark disclosure moves us closer to making spending decisions on the basis on project merit over political muscle, then it will be a boon for taxpayers,” he said.

Would the boon come at the expense of lobbyists? Not necessarily, according to Gerald Cassidy, who has built one of the most lucrative lobbying shops in town in large measure by lobbying spending bills.

Cassidy has embraced the lobbying reform measures passed in the first weeks of the session in a new blog posted today (see related story). He said the new rules could signal a return to the days when members announced their projects on the floor, and doubts his business will be hurt.
According to this thinking, the increase in the number of lobbyists doesn’t relate to the rise in earmarks, but something more basic, such as a general recognition of how important Washington has become to business.

As to the relationship between greenhouse gases and a rise in global temperatures, committees in both the House and Senate will delve into that this week.

The newly named House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing that examines how politics may have affected government-led research on climate change.

Eileen McLellan, who is the Washington representative for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Scientific Integrity Program, said a survey of federal scientists found a “significant number” had either perceived or personally experienced pressure to edit press releases or congressional communications that related to climate change.

The survey will be released today at the hearing.

Frank Maisano of Bracewell & Giuliani, a lobbying firm that represents electric utilities, huffed in an e-mail to reporters that the panel’s witness list doesn’t “appear to offer any thought of balance.”

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, meanwhile, will open its doors to senators who want to discuss their thoughts on global warming, and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee examines transportation fuels, also a greenhouse gas contributor.

Arthicle link: http://www.thehill.com/thehill/TheHill/News/Frontpage/013007/weeds.html