A historic opportunity was missed over the weekend — an opportunity for members of Congress to make a stand together against wasteful pork-barrel spending by bringing the congressional practice known as “earmarking” to a screeching halt.
Earmarks have become a symbol of a broken Washington. Taxpayers have seen their hard-earned money used by Congress to fund a hippie museum … a bridge to nowhere … even peanut storage, buried in a troop funding bill.
The spending process is broken, and both parties are to blame. Fundamental change is needed.
On Jan. 25, House Republicans called for an immediate moratorium on all earmarks and creation of a bipartisan panel to identify ways to permanently end Washington’s ritual of wasteful pork spending. We gave House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and our Democratic colleagues a week to consider our proposal, allowing time for them to discuss the matter during their annual caucus retreat. In doing so, Republicans “threw down the gauntlet of reform,” as Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana eloquently put it.
Friday, the disappointing answer effectively came back from our Democratic colleagues: No thanks. With this regrettable decision, the majority’s breach of trust with taxpayers is complete.
As leader of the Democratic majority that runs the House of Representatives, Speaker Pelosi has the power to shut down the earmark practice in the House overnight. In 2006, as her party was angling to take control of Congress, Ms. Pelosi suggested to The Wall Street Journal that she would exercise that power, saying Democrats might eliminate earmarks altogether if given the majority. A year later, Rahm Emanuel, now the fourth-ranking House Democrat, placed an op-ed in The New York Times denying Democrats had ever made such a suggestion.
With the majority’s refusal to stop the earmarks, the circle is now complete. The leaders of the Democratic majority, who once promised to change the status quo in Washington spending, have become its champion. The speaker’s hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, even dubbed Democrats “the new party of pork.”
House Republicans have changed, too. We fully recognize the failure to control earmarks helped cost our party the majority, and dramatic change is needed.
Three GOP members of the Appropriations Committee — Reps. Jack Kingston of Georgia, Frank Wolf of Virginia and Zack Wamp of Tennessee — have authored legislation that would bring the earmark process to a halt and establish a panel to identify ways to permanently change the spending process. Kingston-Wolf-Wamp has broad support in our conference; more than 125 House Republicans are co-sponsors. Sadly, not a single Democrat has publicly embraced it — not even the freshmen who promised to support earmark reform when they ran for Congress in 2006.
They will have to take a position soon. House Republicans will use every means available to force votes on this issue until the earmark process is brought to an immediate halt.
Some in our ranks support going further, saying Republicans should unilaterally impose this moratorium on ourselves, as I and a number of others have personally done. Others oppose “unilateral disarmament,” arguing it will simply help the Democratic majority tighten its grip on power, further delaying hopes for fundamental change.
Democratic leaders are gambling that this internal GOP debate will inoculate them against public anger over their broken promises. They’re hoping it will dissuade Republicans from holding them accountable for their decision to keep the earmark factory open. They’re wrong. The American people are watching. They want change. Republicans are offering it. Democrats are denying it. And defying the will of the American people is never a sound strategy for the party in power.
House Republicans will also hold ourselves to a higher standard. Where our members are concerned, there will be no more “monuments to me,” in which lawmakers use taxpayer money to fund projects named after themselves. There will be no more “airdrops,” or earmark requests inserted into bills at the last minute to avoid scrutiny. There will be no more “front” entities through which taxpayer funds are laundered to mask their true recipients.
These steps will improve transparency and accountability, but they are interim measures. They represent the floor, not the ceiling, when it comes to the reform truly needed to fix the broken spending process in Congress.
Fundamental change will only begin when the earmarks stop and both parties come together to identify ways to permanently change the way in which Washington spends taxpayers’ money. House Republicans will challenge Congress to make this change.
Editor’s note: A spokesman said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was unable to provide an equal-time response, due to the House Democrats’ legislative retreat in Williamsburg.
John Boehner of Ohio is the Republican leader in the U.S. House of Representatives.
