Senators vow to challenge every earmark
By Toby Eckert
Copley News Service
January 27, 2006
Two senators are vowing to crack down on special interest spending like the kind abused by Randy "Duke" Cunningham, saying they will challenge all "earmarks" that come to the Senate floor.
The threat by Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma escalates the fight over congressional ethics reform that broke out in the wake of the Cunningham bribery scandal and a wider-ranging probe involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Earmarks are secretive provisions that members of Congress insert into legislation in order to fund programs that often benefit their supporters, fund-raisers or districts.
Cunningham, a Rancho Santa Fe Republican, resigned from the House in disgrace after pleading guilty in November to taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors in return for steering federal contracts to them. Abramoff is at the center of a bribery scandal that threatens to engulf several members of Congress.
"We believe that the process of earmarking undermines the confidence of the American public in Congress because the practice is not open, fair or competitive and tends to reward the politically well-connected," McCain and Coburn said in a letter to their Senate colleagues.
"We are committed to doing all we can to halt this egregious ... practice and plan to challenge future legislative earmarks that come to the Senate floor. This will give all Senators the opportunity to learn the merits of proposed earmarked projects and affirm or reject them," the senators wrote.
They said they also would challenge provisions in House-Senate conference reports - meant to iron out differences in legislation between the two chambers - that were not included in a bill passed separately by at least one chamber. Conference reports are a favorite vehicle for slipping controversial legislation through Congress, but McCain and Coburn called that a violation of Senate rules.
"The unsavory practice of inserting such provisions at the last minute stifles debate and empowers well-heeled lobbyists at the expense of those who cannot afford access to power," they wrote. "Decisions about how taxpayer dollars are spent should not be made in the dark, behind closed doors."
While the letter did not mention Cunningham, McCain has invoked his name in the past in calling for stronger ethics rules in Congress.
If the senators make good on their threat, it would significantly slow the appropriations process in the Senate unless earmarks are curbed. In 2005, more than 15,000 such provisions were included in various pieces of legislation.
Coburn or McCain could offer an unlimited number of amendments to strike provisions from a bill, prompting a series of time-consuming debates and votes.
"It's sending shivers down the spines of a lot of senators," said Keith Ashdown, vice president for policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that favors scaling back earmarks. "They've thrown down the gauntlet here to other people. I believe this is probably a bargaining chip to try to move senators down the road to more earmarking reform."
House and Senate lawmakers have floated numerous proposals to reign in earmarks. They include limiting the number of requests each lawmaker is allowed, requiring that they be made public and their sponsors identified, putting a percentage cap on the amount of earmarked spending in each bill and allowing senators to strip new earmarks from conference reports.
Many lawmakers defend earmarks, saying they are merely an example of Congress exercising the spending authority granted to it in the Constitution.
While Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., had no immediate response to McCain's and Coburn's letter, spokeswoman Jenny Manley said: "In general, the way he views earmarks is that it is Congress' constitutional duty to appropriate funding. And if Congress doesn't specify where the funding is going then some unelected civil servant will."
"That being said, he is not in favor of government waste in any form and if the appropriations process will be enhanced by greater transparency, I think he will be in favor of that," Manley added.
It remains to be seen how much zeal lawmakers have for curbing earmarks. When Coburn tried in October to eliminate funding for a controversial bridge project in Alaska, dubbed the "bridge to nowhere," the Senate defeated his effort 85-15.
The $450 million project was eventually removed, but the state got to keep the money and some of it will be spent on the bridge.
Senator Tom Coburn
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2254 Fax: 202-228-3796
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