House Democrats to insert earmarks behind closed doors

House Democrats to insert earmarks behind closed doors

A taxpayer watchdog group says Democrats in Congress are not living up to their promise of openness and transparency in the appropriations process. The group, Citizens Against Government Waste, says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's vow that her party would preside over "the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history" has already proven to be a phony promise.

House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey (D-Wisconsin) has announced he will allow all earmarks into conference reports, which are negotiated behind closed doors and cannot be amended when they reach the House and Senate floors. Obey's plan ignores rules that House Democrats approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify pet projects requested by lawmakers.

David Williams, senior vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste, says the congressman's plan to hide earmarks "does nothing to help the American taxpayer" or lawmakers who regularly fight pork-barrel spending, such as Republican Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn and Representative Jeff Flake. He contends that Democrats are doing the same old tricks the Republicans did by stuffing earmarks into conference reports.

"What they're going to claim is that technically it's still transparent that we're going to know who's doing this," says Williams. "But it's happening so late in the appropriations process that taxpayers and groups like Citizens Against Government Waste [are] not going to have time to really go after these projects and bring them to the public scrutiny," he predicts.

According to Williams, the appropriations process has not changed in Washington because those making the decisions have been in office so long that they "fundamentally believe ... it is their job to send as much money back to their district as possible."

"So when this big changeover happened in January, with the Democrats taking over," he explains, "they were still the same old politicians that they were before the election -- and they really still believe it is their God-given right to spend other people's money on these ridiculous projects."

Williams says there are three ways the Democrat-led Congress could reform earmarks -- give the president a line item veto so he can yank pork barrel projects; make it easy for lawmakers to raise a point of order on the floor of the House and Senate to remove the earmarks; or enforce its own rules by not adding any projects in the conference committee.