Senators Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and U.S. Representatives John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) and John Campbell (R-Calif.) are putting pressure on President Bush to keep his commitment to cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half.
In his 2007 State of the Union address, Bush said:
Next, there is the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour – when not even C-SPAN is watching. In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate – they are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You didn’t vote them into law. I didn’t sign them into law. Yet, they’re treated as if they have the force of law. The time has come to end this practice. So let us work together to reform the budget process, expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in Congress, and cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half by the end of this session.
Yesterday, it appeared the White House was backing away from that goal by refusing to issue a veto threat solely on the explosion of earmarks. Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle said bluntly, “I don’t think [President Bush] has ever made the statement that he would veto legislation because of the insistence of earmarks.” Nussle said Bush needs the line-item veto to effectively chop earmarks from spending bills.
According to the earmark baseline developed by the Office of Management and Budget, there were 13,492 appropriations earmarks in fiscal year 2005. In order to meet Bush’s “50 percent reduction,” Congress could not pass more than 6,476 earmarks for fiscal year 2008.
So far, however, 9,170 earmarks have been discovered in the 2008 omnibus spending bill. This amount, in addition to the 2,161 earmarks in the 2008 defense spending bill (none of which were requested by the Pentagon), brings this year’s earmark total to 11,331 earmarks for 2008, a mere 16 percent reduction compared to OMB’s baseline of 13,492 earmarks in 2005.
UPDATE: Andy Roth of the Club for Growth rounds up comments from Senators Coburn and DeMint and Representatives Shadegg, Hensarling and Campbell.
