Who sponsored that 'pork' project? The House lifts the mask, a little.
The latest earmark rule applies mainly to spending bills, and critics see many loopholes.
WASHINGTON –
As a second member of the 109th Congress agreed to plead guilty on corruption charges last week, the GOP-controlled House voted to change its rules on earmarks.
It's a modest reform - far short of the travel and gift bans that Republican leaders proposed last spring as a response to the corruption scandals roiling Congress. But with broader lobby reform stalled in negotiations with the Senate, it's the best GOP leaders said they could do before members returned home for elections this November.
"The idea is to provide transparency and accountability to what we do," said House majority leader John Boehner, before Thursday's 245-to-171 vote. "If we need to, we can make adjustments before the next Congress."
The rule change requires the disclosure of earmarks - funds targeted to members' pet projects - and their sponsors. But effectively, it will mainly apply to spending bills. Thus, it will affect only one of the appropriations bills for the coming fiscal year - the sprawling Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill - because the House has already passed the other 10 spending bills.
Also, there are many loopholes in the new rule. For example: The $223 million for Alaska's proposed "bridge to nowhere," arguably the most famous earmark, might escape scrutiny because it was added to an authorization bill, not a spending bill.
In a move that particularly rankled reformers, the powerful House Ways and Means Committee changed the definition of a tax earmark from one affecting fewer than 100 entities to one affecting only one. So an earmark targeted at two companies, instead of one, wouldn't have to be disclosed. The move excludes many of the most controversial targeted tax breaks from the new rule.
Finally, the earmark-reform rule changes expire at the end of the 109th Congress this year, along with other House rules. Still, supporters say they expect that these rules will be renewed: Not to do so would require a risky vote opposing openness and accountability in government.
"What generally happens at the beginning of a new Congress is that the rules governing the previous Congress are adopted," says Steve Ellis, vice president of programs for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a public-interest group in Washington that supports accountability in government.
The new House rule "doesn't make it easier to strip wasteful earmarks [and] it won't reduce the number of earmarks, but it is more than what we have today," he adds. "Next year, we will be calling on Congress to enact a 'Leave No Earmark Behind' bill that provides taxpayers complete transparency."
Democrats opposing the rule change say it doesn't go far enough to curb the actions of members such as Rep. Bob Ney, who agreed last week to plead guilty to corruption charges. The Ohio Republican acknowledged performing official acts for lobbyists in exchange for campaign contributions, expensive travel, gifts, and meals. Last November, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) of California pleaded guilty to accepting some $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors in exchange for earmarks in defense bills and other favors.
"It shows that Republicans cannot really run the Congress, because they couldn't pass more comprehensive lobby reform," says Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, who led the floor fight to oppose the earmark reform bill.
"The sum and substance of what we have been able to do is ... require disclosure of some earmarks while concealing others, and that sounds a lot like the status quo," says Rep. Adam Schiff (D) of California.
Senate GOP leaders say they will pass their own rule changes providing more transparency for earmarking before the end of the 109th Congress.
| About the 'earmarks' reform bill |
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What does the bill create?
A searchable website, free and available to the public, that will allow anyone to track the recipients of grants, contracts, 'earmarks,' and loans made by the federal government.
Who will be required to be listed on the website?
Any entity, whether for-profit or non-profit, that receives a grant, loan, contract, or earmark in excess of $25,000, not including federal employees or individual recipients of federal assistance.
What type of information will be listed?
• The name of the recipient of the funding.
• The amount of the award.
• The location of the recipient, including city, county, state, and congressional district.
• A unique identifier of the recipient, and of the "parent entity of the recipient, should the entity be owned by another entity."
• The type of transaction, the funding agency, and a title that describes what the funding is being used for.
How long will it take for the information to be available to the public?
When implemented, the database "shall be updated not later than 30 days after the award of any Federal award requiring a posting."
Click here to view the full text of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006.
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| What are earmarks? |
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Most commonly, 'earmarks' are referred to as attachments of specific projects to federal spending bills. An earmark can be inserted into a bill by any member of Congress, and could be done so anonymously. (The recent earmarks reform bill removes anonymous earmarks from appropriations bills.)
Earmarks avoid being subjected to floor debate because they can be inserted into the text of proposed legislation after the debate on a bill ends, but before the vote.
Earmarks provide a way for members of Congress to provide federal funds to their constituencies by adding location-specific projects into spending bills. Earmarked money in a spending bill must be used on the project specified, such as a highway, courthouse, or bridge.
Many earmarks, though, grant tax breaks or tax incentives to certainindustries, companies, or groups of individuals. They are usually called 'tax expenditures,' and they result in the government forgoing tax revenue it would have collected if the special provision had not been included in the bill.
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| Tax expenditures |
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A 'tax expenditure' is a way for a lawmaker to encourage certain kinds of spending, or to aid taxpayers in special circumstances through tax deductions, credits, exclusions, and deferrals.
Where an earmark in a spending bill grants existing government funds to a specific project, a tax expenditure exempts a company or individual from the government's tax laws when their money is used in a certain way. Some tax expenditures, then, act as spending bills in reverse, because they use money that the government would have collected in tax by giving tax breaks to those who spend in a specific way or on a specific project.
Sources:
Citizens Against Government Waste,
The Heritage Foundation,
Americans For Prosperity,
Wikipedia.
• Compiled by staff
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