Wanted: Leadership on Earmark Moratorium
According to Roll Call, there is support in the House GOP for an earmark moratorium, but the leadership won’t go for it. The number of members who understand that the system is broken and are willing to give up their earmarks is growing.
As President Bush prepared to launch a direct assault on earmarks in Monday night’s State of the Union address, House Republican leaders continued to deal with the fallout from last week’s Conference retreat during which a substantive discussion of reforming the process took center stage.
The GOP’s effort culminated in a letter the leaders sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) late Friday night, calling for Democrats to agree to an immediate moratorium on earmark requests in the fiscal 2009 appropriations bills and to the creation of a select bipartisan committee to study the earmark process. However, if Democrats do not agree, Republicans are not bound unilaterally to the moratorium.
Fiscal conservatives — who were pushing the Conference to adopt a yearlong moratorium on earmarks not contingent upon what the Democrats do — expressed disappointment with the retreat’s outcome, saying the party had not gone far enough in committing to real reform.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said the level of support expressed for the moratorium — gauged by a show of hands — caught GOP leaders off-guard.
“When they asked for the show of hands it was bigger than I, or many of those around me, expected,” Flake said. “There were some frenzied huddles going on around the room.”
Another attendee, who requested anonymity, suggested leadership had bungled the effort and that after a three-hour discussion about earmark reform, the call for a show of hands served as a “pin prick” that deflated the conversation. At that point, leaders huddled and agreed to resume the conversation at the dinner hour.
Flake, and others in the room, said the support for the moratorium did not just come from disaffected conservatives but also from some moderates and Members who aren’t ordinarily viewed as prone to pick up the reform mantle.
“There are a good number of people who recognize we have to be more bold,” Flake said.
He added: “Leadership could have had a moratorium and didn’t. That’s what leaders do, they lead. A lot of Members wanted a moratorium.”
An estimated 15 to 20 House Republicans already have agreed to a personal moratorium on earmarks and have said they will not make any new funding requests for the remainder of the year.
Following the State of the Union, Republican Study Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas) called on senior members of the GOP Conference, including appropriators, ranking members and members of the leadership team, to follow that example and pledge their own personal earmark moratorium.
On Monday, Hensarling said the party made “progress on earmarks” at their retreat but “not nearly as much as I would have hoped for.”
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I love the idea of a moritorium on earmarks. What I wonder is why this wasn’t done 7 years ago when the party of smaller government came into the position of leadership. If the President is so against exessive spending it seems that the use of the veto along the way could have sent a strong message to reduce it. Instead we get the largest spending in government history. We get it now so that the administration can leave and say look what good little boys and girls we are, we reduced spending. Meanwhile the debt continues to grow at alarming rates and accountability takes a back seat to expedience.