{"id":8480,"date":"2006-09-15T14:45:22","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T18:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8480.html"},"modified":"2006-09-15T14:45:22","modified_gmt":"2006-09-15T18:45:22","slug":"the-rest-of-the-story-on-earmark-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-rest-of-the-story-on-earmark-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"The rest of the story on ‘earmark reform’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It sounded like progress. The House passed a measure<\/a> yesterday that purports to improve transparency and accountability in federal spending by requiring lawmakers to attach their name to “[tag]earmarks[\/tag]” contained in major [tag]spending[\/tag] bills. Of all the Republican ethics-reform proposals unveiled earlier this year, this was the only measure to actually get a vote. It passed 245 to 171, with 24 Republicans and 147 Democrats voting against it.<\/p>\n

“Everybody complains about it, but when it ultimately gets to the floor, how can you vote against it?” said Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois.<\/p>\n

Before anyone gets too excited about this “[tag]reform[\/tag]” proposal, it’s probably wise to take a look at the fine print<\/a>. Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Rules Committee, said, “We are blowing away the fog of anonymity.” Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) called it “shameful” and “a sham.” The latter is much closer to being right.<\/p>\n

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published an interesting report<\/a> today that goes through the measure in more detail than the major dailies. A few points to consider:
\n
\n* While earmarked funding<\/i> would be subject to this rule, [tag]earmark[\/tag]ed special-interest tax breaks<\/i> would be exempt from the rule, except for tax breaks that are limited to a single<\/i> person or business…. Any tax cut or tax break benefiting as few as two individuals or entities — such as two large multinational corporations — would be fully exempt.<\/p>\n

* Earmarks added to bills that bypass the committee process are also exempt.<\/p>\n

* As the NYT noted, “The resolution would address only a small fraction of such [spending] provisions and, as an internal rule, would expire at the end of the current session in just a few weeks.”<\/p>\n

So, in summary, this “earmark reform” doesn’t apply to special-interest tax breaks, includes loopholes large enough to drive a truck through, and won’t even be in effect when lawmakers start working again in January. As Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), a former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters, “The majority has labored long and produced a mouse — or a fig leaf at best.”<\/p>\n

For the record, I’d support meaningful reform to the spending process, but this ain’t it. Let this be a lesson to Congress-watchers everywhere: when House Republicans are willing to actually consider an ethics-reform measure, the devil’s in the details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It sounded like progress. The House passed a measure yesterday that purports to improve transparency and accountability in federal spending by requiring lawmakers to attach their name to “[tag]earmarks[\/tag]” contained in major [tag]spending[\/tag] bills. Of all the Republican ethics-reform proposals unveiled earlier this year, this was the only measure to actually get a vote. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}