June 05, 2007

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Meet the new boss, yada, yada:

When Democrats took control of Congress four months back, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., bragged it would take her party less than 100 hours to curb wasteful pork spending by requiring members to attach their names to their "earmarks," exposing such waste to the harsh light of public scrutiny.

She failed to mention this "reform" would remain in effect for little more than 100 days.

At this point, "Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify 'earmarks' -- lawmakers' requests for specific projects and contracts for their states -- in documents that accompany spending bills," The Associated Press reported Monday. . . .

The whole point of the Democratic "reform" was to allow other members to criticize and oppose pork set-asides. But last month, when Rep. Murtha (the second-ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, a man so powerful that he secured more than $200 million for his personal pet projects in 2006 alone, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense) sponsored an earmark to authorize $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center -- a government agency that happens to be based in his district -- Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., a former FBI agent, had the nerve to rise and propose the allocation be canceled.

Rep. Rogers was acting in accordance with the Bush administration's desire to close the office, which duplicates services provided by the FBI and which has received repeated low marks from several federal review boards.

Rep. Rogers' attempt to cut the $23 million failed. Despite that, on May 17 an outraged Rep. Murtha -- who in his failed bid for majority leader described the ethics package in a private meeting with lawmakers as "total crap" -- approached Rep. Rogers on the House floor.

"I hope you don't have any earmarks in the defense appropriation bill because they are gone, and you will not get any earmarks now and forever," the now-tabled resolution quotes Rep. Murtha as telling Rep. Rogers.

Rep. Murtha has never disputed Rep. Rogers' account. He doesn't have to. He knows he will never be disciplined for violating Ms. Pelosi's reforms, because he had it right the first time. The "anti-earmark reforms" are just for show. Mere window dressing. Why, if we enjoyed the immunities of a colorful old Democratic congressman, we might even call them "total crap."

And there's more unhappy editorializing here:

The new game that House Appropriations Chairman David Obey intends to play with budget earmarks this year is worse than the usual hide-and-seek. He is taking the whole thing underground, as though he is to be trusted as a one-man auditor for congressional pork. If this is to be the new ethic that Democrats promised, voters might want their ballots back. . . .

The result, then, is that the earmark projects will receive almost no public scrutiny and no congressional debate. This is precisely the kind of environment in which convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff thrived, the kind of place he fondly called the "favor factory."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to drain this swamp, of course, but Democrats attached enough pork to the Iraq appropriations bill this spring to render that commitment a fraud. Neither the House nor the Senate has delivered on its promise to fully expose and limit the special-interest earmarks.

As budgetary gambits go, though, Obey's is particularly insidious. It is what Democratic caucus chairman Rahm Emanuel last fall called "earmark abuse" when he introduced an amendment that sought to prohibit "the inclusion of earmarks and other provisions in conference reports without the language having first been in either the House or Senate legislation's original language."

That was when the Republicans were in charge. Now the Democrats run the bank, and it appears open for withdrawals again.

Could this kind of thing have any connection to the Democrats' massive slide in the polls? Nahhh.

UPDATE: More backsliding here.