President Bush and Republican members of Congress have a critical choice to make and very little time left in which to do it. For Bush, the choice is whether to issue an executive order directing federal departments and agencies to ignore earmarks that aren’t explicitly included in the legislative text of the recently approved $515 billion omnibus spending bill. As we noted a week ago in this space, the Congressional Research Service has advised Congress that such an executive order would with the stroke of a pen kill the thousands of earmarks that are routinely “air-dropped” into the federal budget via committee reports on spending bills. This is because the Constitution requires that all federal expenditures originate in the House and be approvedby both chambers of Congress. Committee reports aren’t and so are not binding on the executive branch.
Bush has considered such an order for a week. This is no time for timidity. Signing such an executive order tomorrow would make a fine New Year’s Day present for American taxpayers. Finally, somebody in Washington would be acting decisively to end the waste and corruption of congressmen freely handing out millions of tax dollars to campaign donors, relatives and former staff members, and special interest allies.
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Talk of a lame duck in the White House would cease because Bush would gain leverage to force Congress to stop talking about federal spending priorities and actually establish them. He would also bequeath to his White House successors a powerful precedent. If Congress resists, the issue will be starkly drawn for voters in an election year. The thought of Bush on the campaign trail speaking against those who opposed his effort to kill earmarks ought to be sobering. The executive order would be Bush’s finest hour and a worthy legacy on domestic issues.
As for Republicans in Congress, a Bush executive order against earmarks is probably their last slim chance to prove their claim to have gotten the message of 2006. That’s when voters turned to Democrats promising to clean up the “Republican corruption” in Washington epitomized by the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.
House Minority Leader John Boehner has indeed struggled mightily in 2007 but too often too many of his own troops have joined Democrats when earmarks were at stake. On the Senate side, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Old Bulls continued talking and voting for earmarks as if the 2006 elections never happened. If congressional GOPers don’t present a united front supporting a Bush executive order against earmarks, voters will be entirely justified in permanently looking elsewhere for leadership.
