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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Orcastraiter who wrote (83037)	11/26/2006 5:48:52 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, and many Democratic candidates have railed for months against wasteful “special interest earmarks” inserted into bills “in the dark of night.” Now their party’s electoral victories mean that Mr. Stevens will hand Mr. Inouye the gavel of the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee, which presides over the largest pool of discretionary spending and earmarks. But if the Democratic leaders are talking about “earmark reform,” that may be news to Mr. Inouye. “I don’t see any monumental changes,” Mr. Inouye said in a recent interview. He plans to continue his subcommittee’s approach to earmarks, he said. “If something is wrong we should clean house,” he said, “but if they can explain it and justify it, I will look at it.” Meet the new cardinals, as the chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees are known on Capitol Hill. Many have a lot in common with the Republicans they will succeed. All have worked for years to climb to their posts, where the authority to grant earmarks puts them among the most powerful lawmakers in Congress. Like Mr. Inouye and Mr. Stevens, many have developed unusual bipartisan camaraderie while divvying up projects. By longstanding, informal agreement, the majority typically doles out about 60 percent of the money for earmarks and lets the minority pass out the rest. And they form a united front against limitations on the earmark process. “What is good for the goose is good for the gander,” Senator Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who is set to become chairwoman of the transportation subcommittee, said last fall in a speech defending an Alaska Republican’s allocation of more than $200 million in federal money for a bridge to remote Gravina, Alaska, with a population of 50. It became notorious as the “Bridge to Nowhere.” “I tell my colleagues, if we start cutting funding for individual projects, your project may be next,” Ms. Murray warned. To anyone who might vote against the bridge, Ms. Murray threatened that her subcommittee would be “taking a long, serious look at their projects.” Every Democrat on the Appropriations Committee voted against an amendment to strike the bridge, and after threats from Ms. Murray and Mr. Stevens, only 15 senators voted for the amendment. The bridge’s future is unclear. Earmarks became associated with corruption in Congress because of their role in bribery scandals involving the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Representative Randy Cunningham of California. But the number and cost of such projects has soared for years. The Congressional Research Service found that over the last 12 years, the number of earmarks had tripled to 16,000, worth $64 billion a year. Critics argue that the system fosters waste and cronyism by allowing individual lawmakers to direct federal money to pet projects with little vetting or oversight, often anonymously. Democratic Congressional leaders have pledged to end the anonymity by requiring disclosure of the lawmakers who sponsor earmarks, and some have proposed ending the practice of “airdropping” items into a bill just before final passage. But the appropriators and their allies often complain that such measures single them out unfairly, and Democratic draft proposals introduced this year left loopholes for many projects. Some critics argue that the Democrats’ proposal to disclose authorship may not do much to curb earmarks. “Transparency would be enough if we had any shame, if you were embarrassed to get an earmark for the National Wild Turkey Federation,” said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, referring to a $234,000 earmark in a recent agricultural bill. “But Republicans and Democrats have shown that is no longer any embarrassment.” Mr. Flake recently recommended to Ms. Pelosi a rule change that would make it easier to strip members’ projects out of spending bills, but no one expects either party to take that up anytime soon.