Here’s something that hasn’t gotten much attention that should. Late last week, OMB Watch released a valuable background brief on earmarks that gives a good overview of the earmarking process.

Dana Chasin says that the real issue for earmarks is the lack of transparency in the process that has led to corruption. The most effective earmark reforms, Dana writes, would be timely disclosure, revealing to the public what earmarks are being proposed by what lawmakers. He makes a strong case that an outright ban on earmarks won’t reduce federal spending…and that really shouldn’t be the real focus since earmarked funds are a tiny fraction of the federal budget.

We at the Sunlight Foundation agree that transparency is the needed reform. The Honest Leadership and Government Act of 2007 made some important reforms by providing some of the needed transparency, particularly for the House, but there is so much more that needs to be done.

This document from OMB Watch provides some very useful guidance a set of reforms that could be achievable first steps and that might actually provide some transparency and accountability. Those are good initial goals and they might just prove sufficient.

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Breaking News from Roll Call (sub required):

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is protesting a decision by Chief Administrative Officer Dan Beard to shut down a Web site designed to bring attention to the effort to enact earmark reform.

Boehner launched the Web site, earmarkreform.house.gov, on Feb. 12. The site features news links to articles about earmark reform, along with press releases from Republican leaders calling for reform and a link to Boehner’s leadership Web site.

The CAO’s office had given Boehner permission to use the domain name in August 2007. But Beard sent Boehner an e-mail message on Feb. 21 informing the Minority Leader that the Web site needed to be shut down and moved to a different location with a different domain name.

Boehner sent Beard a letter protesting that decision on Thursday afternoon, asking for "a detailed explanation of the events that led your office to make this dramatic reversal."

"Changing its address now will inevitably hamper the effectiveness of the new website, much to the convenience of the majority that runs the House," Boehner writes.

In the letter, Boehner notes that the decision comes after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declined to support a Boehner-initiated call for a moratorium on all earmarks. It also comes after reports that out of the $263 million spent by House freshmen on earmarks, $237 million of that was spent by Democratic freshmen, Boehner writes.

"The leaders of both parties in the House have discussed the need for greater transparency and ‘sunshine’ in Congress, particularly with respect to the process by which our institution spends taxpayers’ hard-earned money," Boehner writes. "By serving as a public clearinghouse for real-time information on legislative efforts to reform the earmark practice in Congress, www.earmarkreform.gov contributes to this goal and helps to increase accountability in use of taxpayer funds. Transferring the website to a different address now - nearly two weeks after its successful launch - will inevitably cause confusion."

A spokesman for Beard said the CAO’s office would respond shortly to Boehner’s letter.

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The floodgates are open in Congress as members are ready to begin work on a new season of appropriations bills. That can only mean one thing: more earmarks. This season, being an election year, will be frought with perils and politics for many members of Congress. Today, the House Republican conference released a new Web site to fight for earmark reform, and, of course, to put Democrats in politically precarious districts on the defensive on reform and spending. Many of these Democrats are freshmen, including Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak. In CongressDaily, Sestak explains how earmarks are used to help support these targeted freshmen:

But he acknowledged that his requests for add-ons were not always given the same priority as those of more vulnerable freshmen. "I do know this," Sestak said. "Because I wasn’t on Frontline. I was not on the Tier One list for earmarks."

Indeed, senior appropriators have credited politically vulnerable freshmen for bringing funds for large, defensible projects back to their constituents.

Sestak’s office appears to use a strategy, which we’ve seen with Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, of directing organizations and local government agencies through the grant process and, in Sestak’s case in particular, of heavily vetting any and all earmark requests, especially defense earmarks:

His office put together a "how-to" guide to help local governments and organizations make grant requests in an effort to steer his constituents to use grants rather than earmarks, when appropriate. It also created a seven-page earmark request form.

But the retired three-star admiral also runs a proverbial tight ship. Sestak’s office heavily vets earmark submissions.

In many cases he runs defense earmark requests by the military to make sure the project is a product they want or could use before sending letters to the subcommittee chairmen with a brief argument in support of the add-on and following up with the chairmen and committee staff. If there is an overlap between campaign contribution and earmark requests, he said, he promptly returns the contributions.

Sestak’s military experience gave his defense earmarks credibility with appropriators, and helped him secure $23.4 million in military-related add-ons. Sestak’s earmarks came to $32 million.

Meanwhile, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Henry Waxman is insisting the Democratic leadership freeze earmarks for the year:

"We have a problem in Congress," Waxman said in a statement that seemingly puts him in line with House Republican leaders on the issue. "Congressional spending through earmarks is out of control. I think our best approach would be to suspend all earmarks for the 2009 appropriations cycle while we consider the right reforms for the earmark process. As a result I will not submit any requests to the Appropriation Committee for this fiscal year."

Waxman praised the "real progress" made by Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wisc., in cutting earmarks in fiscal 2008 appropriations bills by 30 percent. But, he added, too many questionable projects were still being funded.

It looks to be another year of bomb throwing over earmarks. Bomb throwing, is only useful, if it results in more reform, as we’ve already seen, rather than simply scoring political points.

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Congressional Quarterly reports that a small group of Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee are working to reform how earmarks are decided upon. And little wonder, appropriators of both houses have recently been caught red handed abusing them. Seven of the 29 Republicans on the committee are meeting on a weekly basis in an attempt to come up with a reform that appropriators can agree to. One idea they?ve discussed is requiring that both the chairman and the ranking minority member approve all earmarks. The CQ article also lists several other ad hoc groups of lawmakers in both chambers that are looking to further reform the earmark process.

One plan sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey would cap appropriations earmarks and divide the dollars equally among members of the House and Senate. Besides the GOP, members of the Congressional Black Caucus are looking to reform how earmark dollars are spread around in light of a CQ report that showed a large disparity depending on the race of the lawmaker. Republicans are also advocating more transparency in how earmarks are handled. Here, here to that!

Despite the new transparency rules which require the disclosure of what lawmakers secured what earmarks, Republican critics say that the rules aren?t as transparent as the Democrats would have us believe. CQ reports that 197 House Republicans have signed on to a discharge petition calling for a debate over what they say are incomplete earmark-disclosure lists. Minority Leader John Boehner is calling for a debate on the contents of all earmark lists prior to voting on a bill.

We like the new found love for earmark openness and transparency being espoused by both sides of the aisle, even if some of it is politically motivated And despite the pats on the back some in the Democratic leadership are giving themselves, there is much more reform needed.

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We think the USA Today editorialists have got it right: the new ethics laws haven’t meant the end to the perks or ways for lobbyists to curry favor with lawmakers. We never really expected it to (I mean, we weren’t exactly born yesterday…). You can’t legislate good behavior. And that’s why Sunlight’s work urging full transparency for the work of Congress and its members is so hugely important.

Today’s edition also includes an opposing view op-ed from Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid where he attempts to make the case that he and his fellow Democrats have delivered on their promise to end the status quo environment of corruption in Congress. Watchdog journalists have shown how lawmakers and lobbyists have conspired to get around travel restrictions and gift bans. Plus, when the Senate passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, the practice of earmark abuse was preserved by a slight of hand by Sen. Reid and his fellow senators, putting anonymity back in the process.

Even with the most comprehensive reforms, the public will still need to be their own watchdog. Citizens, journalists and bloggers have to have their own tools to shine a bright light on what lawmakers do and who they do it for. In some cases, the spotlight will stop bad things from happening. In others, the light will help root out corruption. Still in others, it will inform citizens more about Congress and its members. Sunlight’s work is about putting a flashlight into every citizen’s hands and pointing them in the right direction.

Note: For one day only, on the SunlightFoundation.com website, we have a new Halloween theme for the popup politician icon. Props to our Labs staff for getting the code in place. (You may have to hit Control-Refresh / Command-Refresh to see the new image.)
 

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Looks like our colleagues over at Taxpayers for Common Sense are getting fed up about earmarks. In the case of Rep. Don Young’s $10 million earmark to benefit a Florida political contributor, they have filed a complaint with the House Ethics Committee. TCS raises the question over how the earmark found its way onto the 2005 transportation bill after it had passed both houses of Congress.

TCS has reviewed thousands of earmarks, and they have never before found one that was edited in such a manner. During the 13-day interval from when Congress passed the bill and the president signed it, the wording of the bill changed. Wording outlining a $10 million highway widening project was turned by a stealth editor into a project to build a highway overpass. A project that would provide a windfall for Young’s Florida real estate fundraiser.

In the complaint, TCS makes the case that the timing of the earmark alteration, coming after it was voted on, makes it invalid and does not have the effect of law. You would think that the Ethics Committee would act to guarantee that Congress retains the act of appropriation and not relinquish the constitutional duty to heaven knows who.

Sunshine…openness and transparency have the effect of keeping people honest. It’s easier than ever to shine light on the process of earmarks – even with the new loopholes discovered in the Senate provisions, but we have much more work to do in order to have true openness, evidenced by the gutting of ethics rules by the Senate earlier this summer. Hopefully the bloggers and the MSM will stick with us in this fight.

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This is a pretty depressing article, if like Sunlight and Taxpayers for Common Sense you think transparency is a good thing when it comes to earmarks. It shows just how tough our job is, and just how crafty members of Congress are. No great surprise on either end, but still…

John Solomon and Jeff Birnbaum report:

Members of Congress are now resorting to less obvious tactics that allow them to get money to favored beneficiaries without acknowledging support for what others consider to be earmarks:

* Lawmakers are holding hearings meant to cajole or pressure executive branch officials into providing money for their pet projects — even when those agencies already have rejected the requests.

* Congressional chairmen are writing favored projects into their committees’ spending bills, exploiting a loophole in the rules that enables those expenditures to avoid being counted, and therefore disclosed overtly, as earmarks.

* Like Emanuel, a growing number of lawmakers are asking executive branch officials to use their authority to send tax dollars into congressional districts or states, effectively financing projects they desire but do not wish to accomplish with specific, and highly public, legislation.

There outta’ be a law. Oh, there is. Well, maybe the law ought to be enforced. There’s a concept. Pass a law and mean it.

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Taxpayers for Common Sense, a grantee of the Sunlight Foundation, last week released the first of two reports on what can only be described as the good, the bad, and the ugly of earmark reform. Their first analysis gives a roundup of what actions the House took and didn’t take.

TCS gives credit to the House for the volume of information now available but takes the House to task for the way it has provided it. The data dumps allowed TCS to get its its excellent databases up before the final vote on almost every bill but frankly they had to work too hard to do it. I mean, if the House and Senate are going to provide this infomation why not just do it in a database form themselves? Why do nonprofits have to take raw data and put the data in a form so real people can actually use it?

In short here are some of problems with how the House disclosed the data:

• Each appropriations subcommittee disclosed its relevant earmark information in a slightly different format.
• Subcommittees also made it hard to match member to earmark by listing the earmark projects and dollar amounts in one spot and the earmark requesters in an entirely separate spot. Most subcommittees also took the process one step further, by organizing one list alphabetically by project name and the other list alphabetically by member name.
• Request letters for the earmarks in the bill were provided, as required, but they came in large tomes available only at the committee offices, instead of in an easy to navigate and easily accessible online format.

The point of creating these databases is to get the information out to the public quickly and efficiently and in a usable format. TCS and Sunlight are working on a new database structure which we will glad give to the House to use, if they want it.

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Over at Porkbusters, N.Z. Bear relays the latest word on the shape that earmark reforms will take in the new lobbying bill, and offers readers a chance to check for themselves.

Rather than clutter the home page up with a million updates, I’ll take a closer look myself over on RealTime…

Based on what we’re hearing from those who would know, key changes include:

* The old version (passed by the Senate) required conference / committee reports to list all earmarks and required the chairman of the relevant committee to distribute the earmark list. But the new version of the bill allows the Majority Leader (as opposed to the Senate parliamentarian, a more objective judge) to determine whether or not a conference report complies with the disclosure requirements.
* The new version removes the requirement for earmark lists posted online to be in searchable format.
* The new version removes the provision that prevented any bill from being considered at all prior to the disclosure of earmarks; now the text only prohibits a formal motion to proceed, which leaves open a procedural loophole that would allow bills to slip through without disclosure.
* The old version prohibited earmarks which benefit a Member, their staff, or their family/their staff’s family. The new version waters that down and only prohibits earmarks that would “only” affect those parties — which means so long as you can make a case that your shiny new project affects at least one person other than you positively, you’re all set.

Porkbusters has obtained and posted a copy of the latest draft of the legislation, and offers this invitation: “Check it out, and if you find more nasty surprises in there, please leave a comment and tell us what you’ve discovered…”

For comparison purposes, here’s an older version of the Senate bill (which passed in January).

More: Mark Tapscott writes that “Reid and Pelosi are gutting earmark reform.”

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Robert Novak suggests in a column today one subject in divided Washington that gets bipartisan support:

[Sen. Harry] Reid is also working behind the scenes with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to undermine earmark transparency and prevent open debate on spending proposals…

…Reid is plotting to strip anti-earmark transparency from the final version of ethics legislation passed by the Senate and House, with tacit support from Republican senators and the GOP leadership.

I’m shocked. Also not surprised. Interestingly, Novak reports that the issue that’s rankling lawmakers is a provision that would “bar earmarks benefiting a senator’s family members.”

An effort by Sen. Tom Coburn to sink just such an earmark that Sen. Ben Nelson requested offers a fairly good reason of why need the rule:

Nelson’s current $7.5 million earmark for software helps 21st Century Systems Inc. (21CSI), which employs the senator’s son, Patrick Nelson, as its marketing director. The company gets 80 percent of its funds from federal grants, mostly through earmarks. With nine offices scattered among states represented by appropriators in Congress, the company has in recent years spent $1.1 million to lobby Congress and $160,000 in congressional campaign contributions. “As of April,” the Omaha World-Herald reported, “only one piece of [the company's] software has been used — to help guard a single Marine camp in Iraq — and it was no longer in use.”

In requesting the 21CSI earmark, Nelson did not disclose his son’s employment. “There’s no requirement that he disclose that,” a Nelson spokesman told this column. “But frankly, in this case, we didn’t disclose it because it’s so public.” An April 24 letter from Levin giving senators instructions on how to request an earmark made no mention of the “Reid amendment” that had been passed by the Senate three months earlier but that required only certification that no senator’s spouse would benefit from an earmark. Inclusion of Nelson’s son, however, would be required if the ethics bill provision passes.

We noted Coburn’s effort to investigate whether 21CSI used federal funds to lobby here.

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