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House grinds to a halt in rift over earmarks
Republicans stall Homeland Security spending bill
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Thursday, June 14, 2007
(06-14) 04:00 PDT Washington -- For the second straight day, minority House
Republicans ground the House to a standstill Wednesday as they drove home their
objections to a Democratic plan to deny a floor vote on lawmakers' thousands of pet
projects.
Public anger over the surging number of special member projects called earmarks --
derided as pork barrel spending -- was a factor in the Republicans' loss of House
control last November, GOP members concede, and now they say they've gotten religion
on the need for openness in government.
Charges of hypocrisy flew in floor speeches as House leaders huddled behind closed
doors to seek a way out of a dispute that Republicans said showed Democrats led by
Speaker Nancy Pelosi had backed down on promises of openness and disclosure made when
they took power last January.
Democrats had hoped this week to pass four of the 12 annual bills that pay for
federal operations beginning Oct. 1. Instead, Republicans have offered 116 amendments
to a $37.4 billion Homeland Security spending bill -- the first of the bills on the
floor -- in a bid to stall it. And on Tuesday they offered repeated motions to
adjourn the House, each requiring a vote, keeping a wary House in session until 2:10
a.m. Wednesday.
Democrats argued Republicans were engaging in partisan attacks to try to embarrass
Pelosi. They charged the GOP lawmakers lacked credibility on earmarks, the number of
which exploded during their 12 years of House rule.
But Republicans cried foul over a plan by Appropriations Committee Chairman David
Obey, D-Wis., for the House to pass all of the dozen spending bills without any
earmarks.
Obey said House members from both parties -- even while expressing concern about
rising government spending -- had inundated his committee with 33,000 earmark
requests. He said it would take the committee's staff four weeks to study all those
pork barrel requests and pare them to a manageable level.
Obey proposed to put the earmarks into the bill as the House prepares to confer with
the Senate to reconcile the two chambers' different versions of the spending bills.
Obey promised to disclose the list of the earmarks a month before such a conference,
which Democrats hope to hold by late summer, so members and the public will have time
to scrutinize and react to the projects.
But once the House-Senate conferees agree on a final bill, the rules of the House and
Senate bar members from amending the legislation to remove individual items. That
means, the Republicans charge, that Obey alone will decide on billions of dollars of
federal spending affecting projects in practically every House district.
"The Obey policy is indefensible ... Obey's slush fund is indefensible," Rep. Adam
Putnam, R-Fla., said as the House debated the Homeland Security spending bill, which
provides a 6 percent increase over President Bush's request and would be 13 percent
more than was spent last year.
"The new majority ran on a policy of openness, honesty and candor, and I suggest this
is a policy that hardly promotes openness, honesty or candor," said Rep. Tom Price,
R-Ga.
When Democrats took over the House last January, they passed rules saying that
members behind all earmarks had to be identified, and that earmarks on all spending
bills would be identified "before members are asked to vote on them," as Rules
Committee Chairwoman Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., told the House.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, an outside watchdog group, said earmarks must be
disclosed early in the process.
"Taxpayers have the fundamental right to know about all earmarks. Both congressional
and administration projects should be disclosed in legislation before the full House
casts a single vote," the group's president, Ryan Alexander, said in a statement.
Obey said that since he became chairman in January when Democrats formally took back
House control, his committee has been swamped, in part because Republicans last year
failed to complete the appropriations process.
That meant Congress had to spend last January finishing up that work, in which the
thousands of earmarks the old Republican Congress had sought were killed for this
fiscal year. He also said his work was hampered because Republicans had removed many
of the committee's staff before ceding control. And then he had to deal with the long
fight with Bush over Iraq war funding.
In 2005, according to the White House budget office, under Republican control of
Congress there were 13,492 earmarks in appropriations bills totaling almost $19
billion.
"Our Republican friends are desperately looking for anything to squawk about because
they haven't been able to find anything substantive to complain about," Obey said.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., heaped scorn on the Republicans. "What's funny is that
many of the Republicans who are fighting for the right to vote against earmarks ...
never met an earmark they didn't like," he said.
Even before the Republicans dug in their heels, the House faced a daunting timetable.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said he would keep the House in session into
Saturday to pass the first four spending bills and send them to the Senate. That
timetable is now in tatters.
E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com.
Republicans stall Homeland Security spending bill
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Thursday, June 14, 2007
(06-14) 04:00 PDT Washington -- For the second straight day, minority House
Republicans ground the House to a standstill Wednesday as they drove home their
objections to a Democratic plan to deny a floor vote on lawmakers' thousands of pet
projects.
Public anger over the surging number of special member projects called earmarks --
derided as pork barrel spending -- was a factor in the Republicans' loss of House
control last November, GOP members concede, and now they say they've gotten religion
on the need for openness in government.
Charges of hypocrisy flew in floor speeches as House leaders huddled behind closed
doors to seek a way out of a dispute that Republicans said showed Democrats led by
Speaker Nancy Pelosi had backed down on promises of openness and disclosure made when
they took power last January.
Democrats had hoped this week to pass four of the 12 annual bills that pay for
federal operations beginning Oct. 1. Instead, Republicans have offered 116 amendments
to a $37.4 billion Homeland Security spending bill -- the first of the bills on the
floor -- in a bid to stall it. And on Tuesday they offered repeated motions to
adjourn the House, each requiring a vote, keeping a wary House in session until 2:10
a.m. Wednesday.
Democrats argued Republicans were engaging in partisan attacks to try to embarrass
Pelosi. They charged the GOP lawmakers lacked credibility on earmarks, the number of
which exploded during their 12 years of House rule.
But Republicans cried foul over a plan by Appropriations Committee Chairman David
Obey, D-Wis., for the House to pass all of the dozen spending bills without any
earmarks.
Obey said House members from both parties -- even while expressing concern about
rising government spending -- had inundated his committee with 33,000 earmark
requests. He said it would take the committee's staff four weeks to study all those
pork barrel requests and pare them to a manageable level.
Obey proposed to put the earmarks into the bill as the House prepares to confer with
the Senate to reconcile the two chambers' different versions of the spending bills.
Obey promised to disclose the list of the earmarks a month before such a conference,
which Democrats hope to hold by late summer, so members and the public will have time
to scrutinize and react to the projects.
But once the House-Senate conferees agree on a final bill, the rules of the House and
Senate bar members from amending the legislation to remove individual items. That
means, the Republicans charge, that Obey alone will decide on billions of dollars of
federal spending affecting projects in practically every House district.
"The Obey policy is indefensible ... Obey's slush fund is indefensible," Rep. Adam
Putnam, R-Fla., said as the House debated the Homeland Security spending bill, which
provides a 6 percent increase over President Bush's request and would be 13 percent
more than was spent last year.
"The new majority ran on a policy of openness, honesty and candor, and I suggest this
is a policy that hardly promotes openness, honesty or candor," said Rep. Tom Price,
R-Ga.
When Democrats took over the House last January, they passed rules saying that
members behind all earmarks had to be identified, and that earmarks on all spending
bills would be identified "before members are asked to vote on them," as Rules
Committee Chairwoman Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., told the House.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, an outside watchdog group, said earmarks must be
disclosed early in the process.
"Taxpayers have the fundamental right to know about all earmarks. Both congressional
and administration projects should be disclosed in legislation before the full House
casts a single vote," the group's president, Ryan Alexander, said in a statement.
Obey said that since he became chairman in January when Democrats formally took back
House control, his committee has been swamped, in part because Republicans last year
failed to complete the appropriations process.
That meant Congress had to spend last January finishing up that work, in which the
thousands of earmarks the old Republican Congress had sought were killed for this
fiscal year. He also said his work was hampered because Republicans had removed many
of the committee's staff before ceding control. And then he had to deal with the long
fight with Bush over Iraq war funding.
In 2005, according to the White House budget office, under Republican control of
Congress there were 13,492 earmarks in appropriations bills totaling almost $19
billion.
"Our Republican friends are desperately looking for anything to squawk about because
they haven't been able to find anything substantive to complain about," Obey said.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., heaped scorn on the Republicans. "What's funny is that
many of the Republicans who are fighting for the right to vote against earmarks ...
never met an earmark they didn't like," he said.
Even before the Republicans dug in their heels, the House faced a daunting timetable.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said he would keep the House in session into
Saturday to pass the first four spending bills and send them to the Senate. That
timetable is now in tatters.
E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com.
