Government watchdog groups who draw a link between corruption and the special project budget requests known as earmarks say Congress “must do more.” House Democrats announced yesterday a ban on directing budget funds to for-profit companies. House Republicans followed up with a decision they wouldn’t request any earmarks at all, for one year.
The Democratic proposal would strike about $1.7 billion in requests, the House Appropriations committee estimates. The move has potentially large budget implications but hasn’t been met with a partner promise in the Senate.
“It’s a positive step forward in both cases. Those earmarks are ground zero for pay to play, and is clearly one of the major areas people are trying to turn thousands of dollars in campaign contributions into millions of dollars in taxpayer money in the form of earmarks,” Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense said in an interview today.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today at a press conference the announcement had nothing to do with ongoing investigations into her House Democrats.
“This earmark discussion has been an ongoing one for us,” she said, citing the steps Democrats took since taking over Congress in 2007 to have a transparent earmark process which discloses who has requested the funds.
She continued:
That doesn’t mean that we don’t respect some of what they have done because most of the earmarks, probably the business earmarks, probably 99.99 percent of them are in the defense bill. Many of them come from the Department of Defense that want certain small businesses to get an earmark because it is entrepreneurial, it is a fresh thing, but they can’t get it in the budget. These companies can’t compete with the big defense contractors, so they come to us to say, “Can you get this in?” What we are going to do instead is have an innovation account at DoD, where the small businesses can come to compete for a contract, if that is what it is. But we have strict guidelines as to the fact that it has to be that entrepreneurial, something fresh and new that they don’t have to compete with the biggies.
Citizens for Government Waste, which often has staffers dress up in pig costumes to protest so-called pork projects, calculates that earmark requests have been declining since the Democrats assumed power. In 2006, there were 9,963 earmarks totaling $29 billion, they calculate. But in this fiscal year, there are 10,160 earmarks worth $19.6 billion, a 32 percent dollar reduction, the group calculates.
Sources familiar with the process suggested the move was made possible in part because of the recent death of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who was chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and known for securing defense earmarks.
Last month the House Ethics Committee exonerated seven members of the Appropriations panel of wrongdoing in connection with the now-defunct lobbying group PMA.
Democratic Senate candidate Robin Carnahan in Missouri, looking to claim the outsider mantle in the battleground race, today applauded the move in a statement but also called for more.
“Republicans want to stop the practice of wasteful earmark spending for just a year and the Democrats want to ban only certain kinds of earmarks – I’ve got a better solution: ban them all,” Carnahan said.
The GOP proposal announced yesterday afternoon the conference had accepted a “unilateral moratorium on all earmarks, including tax and tariff-related earmarks.”
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said in a statement yesterday that earmarks have become a symbol of “broken Washington.”
“Today House Republicans took an important step toward showing the American people we’re serious about reform by adopting an immediate, unilateral ban on all earmarks,” he said.
Ellis’ group tracks earmark requests and reports that in fiscal year 2010 House Republicans requested more than 1,200 earmarks totaling more than $1 billion. He said the GOP plan “has potentially some significant effects, but the real question is what comes next.”
Media Matters for America put out a report showing ten of the GOP leaders who called for the ban have requested more than $240 million in earmarks since 2008.
Ellis told me the Democrats’ proposal certainly could be abused if leadership doesn’t make sure it’s enforced. “It would be naiive to think groups seeking this money won’t try to find a way around the rules,” he said.
Both plans can be undercut by the Senate, though President Obama has called for earmark reform and did not request earmarks for much of his time as a senator.
Citizens for Government Waste said in a statement the move seemed like a good first step. “CCAGW supports this step on the journey toward the complete elimination of congressional earmarks,” President Tom Schatz said.
Late Update: This isn’t a bipartisan kumbaya moment. Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s spokesman Doug Thornell sends over a jab aimed at the Republican proposal.
Thornell says:
The explosion of earmarks under the former Republican majority was so bad it would make Porky Pig blush. Under their watch earmarks doubled and a culture of corruption flourished that Democrats are still cleaning up. They had 12 years to do something about earmarks and ethics and they did nothing except keep the Justice Department busy. On our first day in the majority we put in place strict new measures which increased transparency and strengthened disclosure rules. Every year since, we have implemented strong reforms – many of which the GOP opposed. If Republicans were serious, they would have followed our lead and permanently banned for profit earmarks instead of only a temporary freeze they’ll get rid of after November’s elections.
Ed. note: This post has been updated from the original.
