President Obama and OMB Director Peter Orszag have taken some well-deserved heat for their laissez-faire attitude towards the thousands of earmarks in the 2009 omnibus appropriations bill. Today, the President addressed the issue, calling the bill itself “imperfect” and making two pledges:
1. Eliminate the unworthies. The President said: “And finally, if my administration evaluates an earmark and determines that it has no legitimate public purpose, then we will seek to eliminate it, and we’ll work with Congress to do so.”
2. Reform earmarks: “Now I know there are members in both Houses with good ideas on this matter. And just this morning, the House released a set of recommendations for reform that I think hold great promise. I congratulate them on that. Now I’m calling on Congress to enact these reforms as the appropriation process moves forward this year. Neither I nor the American people will accept anything less.”
(The full text may be found here.)
I think Americans should demand more: transparency about the 2009 earmarks, public input into getting rid of the unworthy ones, and a real reform proposal from the Administration.
The first pledge is essentially a promise to “rescind” some earmarks – send legislation to Congress asking for their removal (which Congress could refuse). After campaigning for two years on moving to higher standards in governance, a symbolic rescission package that eliminates a few earmarks doesn’t seem to pass the seriousness test (and, by the way, what is the standard for “legitimate public purpose”?). A better approach – that is consistent with the President’s pledges for transparency and soliciting citizen’s views – would be to let the people decide what stays and what goes.
Specifically, the previous Administration initiated a publicly-available database of earmarks in appropriations bills (see http://earmarks.omb.gov/) as part of its weak-kneed effort to cut earmarks in half. The Obama Administration should immediately update the database to include the omnibus bill, expand the information to make it easy to identify the requester and recipient of the earmark, and then provide a public comment period during which Americans could identify those earmarks that simply should go away. Anything less would be to continue to ignore the promises made during his run to the Presidency.
The second pledge essentially says: we will turn earmark reform over to the House. Super idea. Ranks right up there with a henhouse safety reform run by foxes. The Administration has an obligation to lead on this issue. When the Obama Administration does send to Congress its rescission requests, that package should contain a legislative proposal for specific earmark reforms. It is time for the President to say exactly what he is willing to do to eliminate this wasteful and corrupting process.
2 responses so far
1 fact based // Mar 12, 2009 at 12:03 pm
yes let’s talk endlessly about 2% of the budget (led by your ex boss McCain) while repubs like your ex boss say no to everything and express ridiculous ideas like your boss and Sen Shelby to let banks like citi and b of a just go under. Can your ex boss explain what would happen after that ?
Oh and that other beaut of a program to get the economy going and prevent growth of the deficit:
freeze govt spending
cut taxes
do nothing about healthcare (despite the fact that every business leader says govt led reform is essential)
2 Go Dog Go! // Mar 12, 2009 at 3:30 pm
While everyone would agree that earmarks need reform and transparency, the party needs to focus on bigger issues. This is less than 2% of the budget and, while it’s fertile political ground today, voters are beginning to grasp the GOP’s complicity in the earmark problems. Republicans very stupidly inserted fully half of the earmark spending in this bill themselves. As such, spending 80% of their messaging time on less than 2% of the budget in which they’ve added pork does not help the cause.
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