Behind closed doors, the party of fiscal responsibility is flirting with the idea of ending the earmark ban.
A contingent of the GOP had floated the idea of restoring congressional earmarks just a week after Election Day. Although House Speaker Ryan shelved the idea, Rep. Bill Flores of Texas warns that conservatives won’t necessarily be so lucky next time.
“I have this sick feeling that there’s more than half of the conference that would vote for this if it came back,” Flores says. The former chairman of the Republican Study Committee tells the Washington Examiner that if the party vote is by secret ballot “it will pass.”
A reversal of the ban would mean a permanent rebranding. After promising to drain the swamp, Republicans would own the subsequent era of abusive and ridiculous spending projects. Each new Tea Pot Museum, every Bridge to Nowhere, and all subsequent Turtle Tunnels would come stamped “courtesy of GOP.”
That hypocrisy doesn’t register with Reps. John Culberson of Texas, Mike Rogers of Alabama, Tom Rooney of Florida and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania.The quartet behind the failed November push for restorations of earmarks argues that they would allow Congress to regain its constitutional power of the purse.
Most of the Republican conference doesn’t know better, warns Tom Schatz. President of Citizens Against Government Waste notes that “63 percent of House Republicans have been elected since 2010” and as a result “have no personal knowledge or experience with earmarks.”
Because they grew up in a post-pork era, those members don’t remember the patchwork spending packages made from thousands of earmarks. And they wouldn’t recognize Duke Cunningham, the California congressman who did hard time in a federal penitentiary for selling pork for bribes.
One of those members unacquainted with earmarks is Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina. But while he gets the constitutional argument for earmarks, he doesn’t buy the logic for bringing them back.
“Just because it’s lawful,” Walker tells Examiner, “doesn’t mean it’s expedient.” As the new chairman of the Republican Study Committee, he’s committed the group to fighting an earmark revival.
For his first big test in the new job, Walker’s pulling out all the stops. The RSC hosted a pork symposium on Capitol Hill Tuesday, complete with an excitable intern in a pink pig costume and former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn.
Before it was cool to make pigs squeal, Coburn led the charge against the individual appropriations. While he made a principled case against pork Tuesday, the senator’s most convincing argument could be one of self-preservation.
“If there’s a public vote [on earmarks],” Coburn said after the event, “Republicans are going to get killed by some of these grassroots organizations out there now.”
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
