WASHINGTON- Under pressure from GOP conservatives, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee announced new rules Tuesday to overhaul the way lawmakers send taxpayer dollars to their districts and states.
The move by Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., came as conservatives including Sens. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., increased the pressure to change the much-criticized, often secretive way in which "earmarks" are inserted into appropriations legislation.
The rules would require all earmarks—the footnotes in bills that lawmakers use to deliver federal bacon to their states—be clearly identified in documents accompanying appropriations bills. The requesting senator, the recipient of the earmark and its purpose would have to be made public and posted on the Internet.
Senators would also be required to certify that neither they nor their spouses would benefit financially from any earmark.
The idea is that greater openness and public scrutiny of earmarks—which critics often called "pork barrel" spending—would mean some of the more wasteful projects would get killed before being added to legislation.
"The changes that we are making in the appropriations process will help to restore confidence in the Congress," said Byrd. "We will increase accountability and openness, while we also will work to substantially reduce the number of earmarks in legislation."
The new rules resemble those passed by the Senate in January as part of an ethics reform bill that has yet to pass the House. But the annual appropriations process gets started next month and Senate Democrats had given no sign they would require changes to the earmarking process absent action on the ethics bill.
Coburn and DeMint had protested that Democrats had signaled they would ignore the rules, and they came to the floor Tuesday to press for broader and stronger earmark reforms, having won a unanimous 98-0 vote in January.
They lost a procedural bid to change Senate rules—a more difficult hurdle than simply altering Appropriations Committee policies—but Byrd's announcement seemed linked to the conservative duo's stepped-up efforts.
The Senate earmark reforms have stalled in the House, which has separately imposed new earmark rules on its members.
Coburn noted that the Appropriations Committee had not implemented the reforms when instructing senators on how to officially ask for earmarks. Byrd and top Appropriations Republican Thad Cochran of Mississippi issued new instructions later Tuesday.
Earmarks blossomed under GOP control of Congress, much to the dismay of conservative stalwarts.
The public has been angered by scandals such as the bribery conviction of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., who obtained more than $2.4 million in bribes after using his seat on the House Appropriations Committee to obtain earmarks for defense contractors.
