Obey Outmanuvered By Boehner On Earmarks

During their years in control of Congress, Republicans earned a reputation for being ethically challenged. Naturally, one of the first resolutions passed by the new Democratic majority last January was an ethics rules package. Called H.Res.6, the package includes provisions for Earmark Transparency requiring that all bills, joint resolutions and conference reports contain a list of earmarks, limited tax benefits, and limited tariff benefits contained in the bill, including the name of the member who requested the item. In addition, any member requesting an earmark must provide a written statement to the chairman and ranking member of the committee of jurisdiction stating:

• The name of the member;

• In the case of an earmark, the name and address of the intended recipient or if there is no intended recipient, the location of the activity;

• In the case of a limited tax or tariff benefit, the name of the beneficiary;

• The purpose of the earmark or limited tax or tariff benefit; and

• A certification that neither the member nor the member’s spouse has a financial interest in the earmark or limited tax or tariff benefit.

Sounds good, doesn't it. Real reform.

According to an analysis prepared by Lisa Rosenberg of the Sunlight Foundation, the reform has a serious weakness. There is no provision for posting earmarks on line.

Rep. Dennis Moore, (D- Kan), has sponsored a resolution that would require lists of earmarks (but not financial interest statements) to be available on publicly-accessible websites 48 hours before legislation is considered on the House floor. Though the resolution has attracted 30 cosponsors, it seems to be languishing in the House Rules Committee.

Still real reform.

Not so fast. Remember the 109th Congress didn't pass a budget. This year America is operating on continuing resolutions. As my uncle might have said the Congress is up to it's ass in allegators.

Jump ahead to June, 2007. Frank James of the Chicago Tribune's The Swamp, reports that

When Democrats assumed control of the House, they found themselves faced with more than 30,000 earmark requests. House rules called for the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey (D-Wisc.) and his staff to review each request to search out dubious ones.

But because the Republicans left unfinished business which the Democrats had to attend to, like budget legislation left unpassed and all the time it took to get the Iraq and Afghanistan emergency spending bill done, there wasn’t enough time to review the requests in order to find egregious earmarks.

What to do, what to do? James reports that

Obey and the House leadership decided they wouldn't include the earmarks with the spending legislation for the debates on the House floor since there was not enough time to vet them.

Instead, they would wait to disclose earmarks until the time when the appropriations legislation was passed by the House and the Senate both bodies were in negotiations to harmonize the their competing versions—the conferences.

Reasonable approach, right? Wrong. Obey's plan meant lawmakers would not be able to challenge questionable earmarks attached to House spending bills at an early stage. Earmarks could only be challenged once a conference report came to the floor by voting against the entire conference report. Since nobody is going to vote against an entire conference report to challenga an earmark, Obey's procedure essentially insured passage of the 30,000 earmarks.

Boehner read Obey's plan and immediately understood the opening it gave Republicans. Boehner and the Republicans charged that Obey's proposal for dealing with the 30,000 earmarks left over from the 109th Congreas amounted to "creating slush funds for secret earmarks." Thursday, after being pummelled by Boehner and the Republicans, Obey agreed to publish a list of the earmarks and the lawmakers behind them a month before the legislation to which they are attached comes up for a vote. Quoting Obey:

The last year I was chairman of the Labor, Health Subcommittee (1994) -- I mean, the House Appropriations Committee, the Labor, Health Subcommittee didn't have a single earmark. Two years ago under Republican leadership, they had over 3,000. It was Bob Byrd and Dave Obey, under the leadership of the speaker and Harry Reid, who put a moratorium on earmarks last year. It was not John Boehner or Jerry Lewis. I will stack my reform credentials up against those two any day of the week and twice today.

Then I would also point out that the difference is that it took you a couple years to find out what Duke Cunningham had did -- or had done. It took you more than a year to find out about Don Young's highway in Florida. What we are proposing will guarantee that every single project that we intend to put in our bills eventually will be on record, in the public, just as soon as we can get them there. And the public will have and every member of Congress will have and you will have a month to scrub that list, and if you see any item that you think we ought to be squawking about, you let us know, and we'll be squawking.

Here is Boehner's June 14, 2007, memo on the Obey surrender.

M E M O
From: Leader Boehner
To: House GOP Members
Re: Status of Appropriations Debate

Date: 14 June 07

I'm writing to update you on the status of our united Republican effort to compel the Democratic majority to abandon its plan for slush funds for secret earmarks.

A tentative agreement has been reached between Republican and Democratic leaders - an agreement that represents a victory for House Republicans. The terms of the agreement are as follows:

Democrats will abandon their plans to pass appropriations bills with slush funds for secret earmarks. The plan announced last month by Chairman Obey to keep all earmarks secret until "air-dropping" them into conference reports will be dropped, effective immediately.
Two appropriations bills (Homeland Security, Military Quality) that include little or no earmarks will move forward. Following consideration of these two bills, all 10 remaining appropriations bills will come to the floor with their earmarks fully disclosed and subject to challenge by any Member.

In the unique case of the Energy & Water bill, the earmarks will move to the floor in a package separate from the non-earmark portion of the bill, but (again) the earmarks will be fully disclosed and subject to challenge by any Member. In short: the Democrats' slush funds for secret earmarks are dead.

Democrats will restore the 2006 House Republican earmark reforms for appropriations bills. This rules change will go into effect immediately after the House completes action on the Homeland Security and Military Quality appropriations bills, which include little or no earmarks. This aspect of the agreement will restore a key element of the 2006 GOP reforms repealed by the Democratic leadership in 2007.

The agreement does NOT include specific time limits on debate for any appropriations bills. Democrats earlier today demanded that Republicans accept unprecedented time limits that would arbitrarily minimize debate on spending bills involving hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. House Republican leaders refused this demand. Instead, we indicated to Democratic leaders that if the earmark reforms outlined above are complied with both letter and spirit, and adequate time is provided to debate substantive issues, Republicans do not anticipate that we will need to engage in extraordinary parliamentary tactics that will again bring the appropriations process to a halt.

We'll let you know more as we know it. In the meantime, please know how proud I am of our House Republican team. We've taken a principled stand together on behalf of the American people. And if we continue to stand together, we will succeed in bringing meaningful change to the way in which Washington spends the taxpayers' money. Thank you for the role you've played in making this victory happen.

Needless to say Republican leaning media is playing this story to the hilt.

Hint to Nancy Pelosi. Read the next to the last paragraph in Boehner's memo. He is setting you up for the next fight. He is going to try to seize what the public will view as the moral high ground.

Would it be too much to ask the Democratic leadership to at least try to think about what they are doing and how it looks?