March 16, 2006

Earmark Limit a Farce

From The Hill via Glenn Reynolds this morning:

As House Republican leaders have not agreed on a final plan for earmark reforms, the internal Appropriations Committee rules changes represent the only new limits. House leaders briefly outlined possible earmark reform to rank-and-file members at a closed-door meeting yesterday morning, but fiscally conservative leaders such as Reps. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said the proposal is “sketchy” and unsatisfactory.

Flake said leaders are willing to let lawmakers vote against individual earmarks in spending bills when they first reach the chamber floor but not after bills emerge from conference negotiations.

Appropriators are lobbying their colleagues to oppose dramatic earmark reform. At the same time they are implementing their own new rules.

The chairmen of appropriations subcommittees that traditionally produce among the most project-laden of the annual spending bills said they are limiting their colleagues to 10 project requests each.

Reynolds calls this "limit" a "modest improvement" while at the same time calling for serious reform, but this really is no improvement at all. In fact, this "limit" could make things worse!

From the same (unnamed) source as my last post...

The House Appropriations Committee announced today that it would cap the number of earmark requests made by each Member at 10 requests per appropriations bill. The House currently has 10 separate appropriations bills.

-Under this new rule, if each Member of Congress requested 10 projects on each bill, the total number of earmark requests would total 43,500.

-Last year, the House Appropriations Committee received 34,687 earmark requests.

-On 8 of 10 House appropriations bills last year, the average number of earmark requests per requesting Member was below 10.

-If every Member of the House requested 10 earmarks on each appropriations bill this year, the number of earmarks would total 43,500, an increase of 8,813 earmark requests over the FY2006 level.

-Even if the number of requesting Members per appropriation bill remained the same for FY2007, the total number of earmark requests would still increase.

So, if each member were to put in earmark requests up to their "limit," then the actual number of earmarks would go up by almost 10,000! Any person that pays attention will realize that the Appropriations Committee's new rule is nothing but a farce!

Want to see some raw data for earmarks? Click here for the PDF.

Again...Republican Conservatism is dead.

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