Sep 8, 2006 -- CLC Pushes Congress for Real Earmark Reform But Not as a Substitute for Lobbying and Ethics Changes

The Campaign Legal Center is urging House Members to support real earmarking reforms while stressing that substantive lobbying and ethics changes will eventually have to be addressed as well. In a letter to every member of the House of Representatives, the Legal Center laid out a series of bare minimum requirements that any attempted reform of the earmarking system must meet in order to stand any chance of making a dent in the widespread abuse of the system.

The letter also states that the lobbying and ethics changes passed by the House and the Senate earlier this year do not constitute substantive reform and urges Congress to reject them and pass a measure that will live up to the standards laid out by the Speaker of the House in January after the Jack Abramoff scandal broke.

The full letter to House Members is below.

September 8, 2006

Dear Representative,

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) recently announced that the House will soon take up legislation dealing with earmarks. The Campaign Legal Center believes that reform of the way earmarks are handled by Congress is long overdue and strongly urges you to ensure that any earmark reform passed by the House is not just window-dressing and election-season posturing. We also urge you to make clear that you understand that earmark reform cannot make up for the House's failure to pass new, stronger rules and laws governing lobbying and congressional ethics in place of the anemic bill passed earlier this year.

The abuse of earmarks - a process that allows legislators to insert language directly into spending bills to fund their pet projects, thereby circumventing the ordinary legislative process and shielding such measures from public scrutiny and congressional debate - has grown progressively worse in recent years. Both the number and funding of earmarks has exploded over the past decade. According to information compiled from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the total number of earmarks has grown from 4,126 in fiscal year 1994, to 15,877 in fiscal year 2002 - an increase of nearly 400 percent. And in terms of the funding associated with those earmarks, the amount of earmarked funding increased from $23.2 billion in 1994 to $64 billion in fiscal year 2006. Earmarked dollars have doubled since 2000, and come close to tripling in the last 10 years.

Here are some of the questions that you should ask when gauging whether an earmark reform proposal merits your support:

Ø Do the new rules apply only to appropriations bills or do they also cover earmarks inserted by other committees with earmarking powers, especially the tax-writing committees (House Ways & Means and Senate Finance) and by the public works committees (House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee)?

Ø Do the new rules cover not only earmarks in measures passing on the floor but also conference reports and joint explanatory statements?

Ø Do the new rules require the sponsors of earmarks to be publicly disclosed before the bill is voted on? Will the rules require the committee to include in appropriations bills an explanation of any earmark that was not included in the authorizing legislation?

Ø Do the new rules provide a procedure for Members to follow in bringing a "point of order" against a special-interest earmark without derailing the entire bill in which the provision has been inserted?

Ø If an earmark exceeds the amount provided in the authorizing legislation, do the new rules provide a point of order against the additional amount?

Ø Do the new rules apply to earmarks benefiting federal entities which Taxpayers for Common Sense says account for 42 percent of all earmarks?

These are not all the benchmarks against which any proposed earmark "reform" should be measured, but they are the starting point. If the answer to any of these questions is "no," then the proposal being put forward is a phony, and yet another shameful election-year attempt to "put one over" on the American people.

We recognize that a number of your colleagues have made earmarking into an art form and they will not part with the practice easily. Unnecessary and wasteful projects costing taxpayers millions of dollars mean high-profile ribbon cutting ceremonies and the gratitude of campaign donors back in the district.

The Legal Center strongly urges you to examine and measure any earmark reform closely according to the issues noted above. We also urge you to reject the weak, ineffective ethics and lobby reform passed by the House earlier this year and in its place pass a real reform measure that will live up to standards Speaker Hastert laid out last January.

Sincerely,

J. Gerald Hebert
Executive Director

Meredith McGehee
Policy Director