Pelosi Weighs Ban on 'Earmark' Spending
By ANDREW TAYLOR,AP
Posted: 2008-03-06 19:19:24
WASHINGTON (AP) - Under pressure from Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is considering a ban on home-district projects sought by lawmakers, a move that would rob the GOP of one of its top campaign issues.
Republicans, led by Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio - one of only 23 House members who don't take earmarks - have been bashing Democrats for months on the issue. He is calling for a moratorium on earmarks, those back-home projects such as grants to local police and fire departments, money for health clinics and economic development projects, military housing, and funding for highway and airport construction.
Pelosi, D-Calif., and allies such as Rep. David Obey, chairman of the pork-distributing Appropriations Committee, are getting fed up with being attacked by Republicans on earmarks. Obey, D-Wis., is especially irked that many in the GOP rank and file are asking for earmarks at the same time they're calling for a moratorium.
Pelosi and Obey are considering going along with GOP calls for a one-year ban.
"My patience is running out on earmarks, I'll tell you that," Pelosi told reporters on Thursday. "We will either have them, or we won't."
Pelosi met Thursday afternoon with Obey and No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland to plot strategy, but no conclusions were reached, Pelosi aides said. A ban would anger rank-and-file lawmakers, but since little progress is expected this year on the annual spending bills that carry the thousands of earmarks, a ban wouldn't be as great a sacrifice. Lawmakers wouldn't be able to claim credit for much federal pork before Election Day anyway.
Earmarks are extremely popular with lawmakers, but they have come under attack in the wake of high-profile boondoggles like the proposed $223 million "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska. And media reports of lawmakers receiving bundles of campaign contributions from executives of companies benefiting from earmarks has cast Congress in an unflattering light.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain of Arizona has long railed against earmarks, and he promises to veto pork-laden appropriations bills if elected. But his views have had little impact on Senate GOP colleagues like Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who eagerly and skillfully pursues earmarks.
Some 158 House Republicans have signed on to a GOP plan calling for a moratorium on earmarks while a bipartisan panel studies the issue and comes up with additional reforms. But more than a few of these Republicans have, in the meantime, been papering the Appropriations staff with requests for earmarks.
"Most of the Republican conference is claiming to support an earmark moratorium at the same time as they are submitting their earmark requests," said Kirstin Brost, spokeswoman for Obey.
Boehner is leading the charge on his side, despite some resistance from old-school Republicans such as Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, former chairman of the Appropriations panel. He welcomed reports that Pelosi is considering a moratorium.
"An earmark freeze is a long-overdue first step toward changing the way Washington spends taxpayer dollars," Boehner said.
An earmark culture has taken hold of Congress in recent years, with pet projects exploding in numbers and cost after Republicans took over Congress in 1995.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and ex-Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, saw earmarks as a way to try to help endangered Republicans keep their seats and to reward lawmakers willing to toe the leadership line.
When first taking over Congress last year, Democrats imposed a one-year earmark ban as they finished up leftover spending bills. Later, they imposed new earmark disclosure rules and made cutbacks when passing the appropriations bills for the current year.
That did nothing to curb criticism from the White House and GOP conservatives.
The 43 percent cut in earmarks claimed by Democrats made the competition for earmarks even more intense, with the role of highly paid lobbyists - who advocate earmarks for clients such as local governments and federal contractors - taking on even greater prominence.
"Something needs to be done because these earmarks are completely out of control," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who is the only House Democrat to have publicly sworn off the practice. "There's a whole world of lobbyists that has grown up around earmarks. ... It's getting to be absurd."
Still, the idea of a temporary earmark ban appears to be a nonstarter across the Capitol, where the right of senators to channel taxpayer dollars to their states is deeply ingrained. House lawmakers don't want to give up their earmarks if pork-hungry senators get to keep theirs.
Separately, the Senate Budget Committee approved by a party-line vote a $3 trillion election-year budget blueprint for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The nonbinding measure calls for sizable domestic spending increases that are made possible by allowing President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire, though cuts aimed at the middle class are expected to be added during floor debate next week.re the critical Ohio primary, which he lost to Hillary Clinton by a wider-than-expected margin.
It was a key link in a chain reaction set off days earlier when Brodie made some candid comments to journalists in Ottawa last week.
Brodie reportedly downplayed talk by Democratic candidates that they would reopen NAFTA.
According to one source present, he specifically said the Clinton camp had told Canadian officials that her tough talk should be taken with a grain of salt. Brodie says he doesn't recall specifically mentioning Clinton or Obama, but he has not denied the rest of the conversation.
CTV pursued the story from Washington the next day. For reasons that remain unclear, the network wound up focusing its subsequent reports much more heavily on Obama than on Clinton.
When Obama denied such conversations had taken place with Canadian officials, a leaked Canadian diplomatic memo surfaced.
It contained a written account of a meeting between the Democratic front-runner's economic adviser and Canadian officials, in which they interpreted him as having assured them NAFTA would not be reopened. The Obama adviser says his remarks were twisted out of context.
But the damage appeared to be done. The leak occurred on the eve of the Ohio primary.
Obama was hounded by the story, and cut short a news conference during which he was pounded with the most aggressive questioning of his campaign.
The issue is certain to surface again in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary, and in a foretaste of the fall campaign Republican nominee John McCain has also raised it to attack his Democratic rivals.
The New Democrats said the prime minister's promises of a probe are not good enough. They want Brodie fired, and have lambasted Harper for telling the Commons this week that his chief of staff was not responsible for the leak.
"Will he now apologize to this House, the American people, and Senator Obama, and will he fire his chief of staff?" NDP Leader Jack Layton asked during the daily question period.
"Will the prime minister show some backbone and show Mr. Brodie the door immediately?"
Layton's questions of the prime minister have been posted on Obama's website and earned him tens of thousands of viewers.
He was scheduled to appear Thursday night on CNN to discuss the matter.
Both Layton and Liberal Leader Stephane Dion are requesting an RCMP investigation, and suggest the Security of Information Act may have been breached with the leaking of a secret diplomatic document.
Last year, the Mounties hauled out a junior-level bureaucrat in handcuffs for allegedly sending a climate-change document to the media. Harper's opponents wondered why he won't publicly ask the Mounties to step in now, over what could be a far more damaging leak.
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