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Congress lifts blinds on its spending
After 2005's bribery and corruption scandals, Congress moves to list US federal expenditures on a searchable database.
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"We were getting about 25 requests per member. Now it's an average of 10," says John Scofield, a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee. "It helps us to do better oversight and weed out the bad ones." In addition, House appropriators say they will avoid adding earmarks when House and Senate conferees reconcile two versions of a spending bill – a source of abuse in the past.
While Appropriations Committee members have borne much of the criticism for earmarking, the practice exists in other committees as well. Congress included 6,373 earmarks in the last highway bill, amounting to $24.2 billion. The recent Water Research Development Act included 250 earmarks at a cost of $11 billion. As of press time, the House version of earmark reform still applied mainly to the Appropriations Committee.
"There ought to be a blanket provision with respect to earmarks – whether on taxes, healthcare, defense, or appropriations," says Ms. Miller.
Still, reformers say the searchable database is a key first step. "We see this like the battle in the Pacific in World War II: You take one island at a time," says John Hart, spokesman for Senator Coburn.
Critics, though, note that even the Coburn transparency reform doesn't get to the root of the problem. "The information comes 30 days after the funds are spent. That's about 60 days too late," says Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information here. "We still lack an objective assessment of the spending."
Spending accountability: a work in progress
A done deal
The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, already approved by the Senate, was expected to clear the House on Wednesday. It does the following:
• Creates a database that names recipients and dollar amounts of most federal grants, contracts, and loans. These will be searchable online and available to the public.
• Identifies so-called pork-barrel projects, or earmarks, in the searchable database. The database will not necessarily name lawmakers who added an earmark, but it will reveal the congressional district where the federal money will go.
• Gives the White House Office of Management & Budget the job of managing the online database.
Onworking
The House is wrangling over a rule change that would do the following:
• Identify lawmakers adding earmarks to bills – in advance of a vote on the bill. In dispute is whether the rule change applies just to Appropriations Committee members or to other committees.
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