Friday, February 27, 2009
Editorial: Earmark reform is AWOL
Democrats made promises to rein in spending that they haven't kept.
From the RoundTable blog
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Democrats have not made good on their 2006 promise to reform the budgetary earmark progress when they regained control of Congress. According to the latest estimates, the current omnibus spending bill working its way through Congress contains about 9,000 earmarks directing $5 billion in spending.
The current earmarks are a bipartisan affair. Neither party has been able to give up on pork. But Democrats bear the brunt of the blame because they promised change.
Now President Obama, if he wants to make good on his own pledge to bring wasteful spending under control, must challenge his own party.
Not every earmark is a Bridge to Nowhere, of course. Some of the spending is completely worthwhile and defensible.
Much of it is not, however, and since the items are slipped in by individual members of Congress, there is no real debate or discussion.
The earmark process, which disgraced and imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff referred to as his "favor factory," invites corruption in addition to waste.
Republicans, who preached fiscal discipline when out of power only to abandon it when they had the purse strings, made a dark art of earmarking. In 1995, the first year of Republican control of the House, only 1,495 special projects were inserted in spending bills. By 2005, there were 13,500 earmarks directing $19 billion in spending.
Democrats have made some strides in making the earmarking process more transparent. It's easier to tell which members of Congress are directing spending. That could make it easier to find links between, say, campaign donors and earmark requests.
But there are 9,000 reasons in the current omnibus spending bill to doubt the efficacy of the reform effort.
