Porkbusters and Eyeblast.tv are teaming up on a new citizen journalism project. You can be the Edward R. Murrow of earmarks, and Eyeblast.tv will help you out with equipment and expertise. More details here.

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There’s been a whirlwind of earmark activity of late, with the two Democratic presidential candidates joining the all-but-nominated Republican candidate in backing an effort by Sen. Jim DeMint to institute a one-year moratorium on earmarks. In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is considering a similar ban, and Rep. Jeff Flake, as anti-earmark as any member of Congress, takes it seriously enough to worry that Democrats will get the credit for ending earmarks rather than Republicans.

Independent bloggers and organizations like Porkbusters, Americans for Prosperity, the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste and of course Taxpayers for Common Sense deserve a tremendous amount of credit for driving this issue so hard and so long.

My own member of Congress, Rep. James Moran, is no stranger to the lucrative rewards of earmarking. From his perch on the Appropriations Committee, he offers his view of the rest of his colleagues:

“I think this is one of those political fads that’s having its time right now, just like campaign finance reform. … I don’t blame the presidential candidates, but I sure blame a lot of members who will be the first ones to denounce earmarks and also be the first ones in line to ensure that [House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John] Murtha [D-Pa.] puts money in the Defense bill for their district,” he said. “I think that some of these members who define the term hypocrisy ought to be the first ones to lose their earmarks. If all of us lose it, so be it, we’ll still survive. But I think it does a real disservice to Congress and our constituents to eliminate earmarks.” Moran, who worked as a budget analyst at the former Health, Education and Welfare Department during the Nixon administration, said, “We earmarked every dime we could.”

And, I suspect, so would they again as soon as the one-year moratorium expired. Since the Senate gutted earmark transparency, Senators could earmark those dimes (amounting to billions of dollars) with no disclosure of the beneficiaries. The way to reform earmarking is to bring the process out of the smoke-filled rooms and into the light of day.

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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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So, on Sept. 14, the House passed a rule that aimed to bring some transparency to the earmarking process: Members names would have to be attached to the earmarks they sponsored. While the goal is worthy, it seemed to me that this particular rule was fairly modest at best, and potentially even counterproductive; since then, we’ve learned just how modest a reform the rules change is–it doesn’t apply to earmarks already inserted in 10 of the big appropriations bills.

But apparently, even that level of disclosure is too much for the House. Captain Ed reports that when it comes to pork, rules are for suckers:

The House has considered a new Coast Guard appropriation (HR 5681), but they did so under a suspension of the rules. This parliamentary manuever allows Representatives to undermine the new rule just created that forces them to identify their earmarks in the Congressional Record. Sure enough, sources on the Hill tells me that some shenanigans occurred with the Coast Guard Authorization Act, and section 405 confirms it. The addition to HR 5681 authorizes a multimillion-dollar research program at the Great Lakes Maritime Research Institute, a joint project of the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Rep. James Oberstar is the responsible party, but it’s not so much this one, particular earmark (costing taxpayers $11.5 million) that rankles. Rather, it’s the revelation of just how phony this reform is: it applies to hardly anything, and it can be suspended on those things to which it applies.

Update: Andrew Roth of Club for Growth has video…

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I’ve noted before that the original bete noir of the anti-earmark movement, the Alaska Bridges to Nowhere, were alive and well and still receiving federal funding. Today Matt Volz of the Associated Press reports that in May 2006, the Alaska state legislature approved spending $93 million in federal money on the Knik Arm Bridge (the official site for the bridge authority is here), and then, a month later, the board of the bridge authority voted, in a closed-door meeting–some fairly large pay raises for its top executives:

JUNEAU — The top three executives of a bridge authority created by the state to span the Knik Arm received sizable pay hikes soon after securing an influx of state and federal money for the project.

The pay raises were approved after a closed-door meeting of the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority’s board in June. The salaries of executive director Henry Springer and deputy executive director of corporate affairs Darryl Jordan went up to $130,000 each from $104,496 and $90,324, respectively. Chief financial officer Kevin Hemenway’s pay rose to $129,000 from $90,324.

The project, of course, is still moving ahead:

Planning and construction of the bridge itself cannot begin until an environmental impact statement is completed, which is expected to be done by next spring. A draft impact statement was released this month, Jordan said.

The authority’s official estimates to build the bridge is $450 million to $550 million. That is lower than previous estimates because the state Legislature included a separate allocation this year for road improvements on the Matanuska-Susitna Borough side of the project, Jordan said.

Apparently, when it comes to pork spending, it’s “forgotten, but not gone,” rather than the other way around…

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Members of the House Appropriations Committee appear to be balking at the prospect of change in House rules that would attach the names of lawmakers to the earmarks they’ve inserted into spending bills. As the Times article notes, this rather modest change would apply only to the House (not the Senate), and would exempt defense earmarks (where the real money is) from scrutiny. I’ve noted before that there are ways around the disclosure provisions proposed in the rules change, which potentially could make it harder to identify who’s getting earmarks, because lawmakers could use obscure descriptions–any company incorporated in Harrison, N.Y., in 1923–to avoid the rule’s requirement that they take credit for their earmarks. Still, with all it’s limitations, this measure would shine a little light on spending bills already drafted but not yet passed–even a modest disclosure measure is better than none.

The Hill reports the Rep. Jerry Lewis, the chairman of Appropriations, has decided to make the perfect the enemy of the good-so-far-as-it-goes:

Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) huddled with his panel yesterday afternoon but emerged with no firm panel-wide plan to oppose the earmark-reform resolution. Many GOP appropriators believe the resolution singles out their committee’s product while applying a narrow definition of tax and authorizing earmarks.

“We are attempting to communicate with leadership that this committee feels very strongly that earmark reform is a priority, but it should apply to everybody,” Lewis said after the meeting. “We feel very strongly that… the broad-based membership should be involved in it, not just the Appropriations Committee.”

For what it’s worth, his argument has merit. Earmarks aren’t the only means for showering a special interest with special attention; tax breaks and regulatory relief can–and are–secretly doled out to those with close ties to members of Congress. But if he were sincere, wouldn’t Lewis support the earmark rules change as a fisrt step toward greater transparency in Congress? Wouldn’t he have more moral authority on tying the names of lawmakers to tax breaks, for example, if he’d been behind the reform of earmark rules?

Prof. Glenn Reynolds has more on this, including a list of appropriators to contact. One thing this latest episode does illustrate is that, important as it is for getting a sense of how government is spending our money, S. 2590, the Coburn-Obama federal contracting and grantmaking disclosure bill, really wasn’t an earmark reform measure. While the spending practices of federal agencies will be available online–including information on the number of no-bid and closed-bid contracts they award–Congress’s ability to secretly make no-bid awards through the earmarking process will be unaffected. As is often the case, Congress reforms, not Sen. You and Rep. Me, but the federal bureaucrat behind the tree. (Apologies to Russell Long…)

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The House and Senate have agreed on a version of S. 2590, the Coburn-Obama database bill. The press release indicates that the publicly available database that the legislation will create will include both federal contracts and grants (an earlier House bill, Blunt-Davis, would have disclosed grants but not contracts). The bill still has to pass the House, but it looks like it’s moving forward. Here’s the release:

WASHINGTON—House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.), U.S. Senators Tom Coburn (Okla.), Barack Obama (Ill.), and Tom Carper (Del.), and Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (Va.) today announced that they have reached agreement on legislation to increase accountability and transparency by establishing a public database to track federal grants and contracts.

House Majority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) announced he plans to schedule the agreed-upon language for House floor consideration next week.

“This process has focused on enhancing the accountability and transparency in the federal budget process,” Blunt, Boehner, and Davis said. “The federal government awards approximately $300 billion in grants to roughly 30,000 different organizations. Each year, roughly one million contracts exceed the $25,000 reporting threshold. We need to be sure that money is spent wisely. Our legislation creates a transparent system for reviewing these expenditures so that Congress, the press, and the American public have the information they need to conduct proper oversight of the use of our tax dollars. The package we’ve agreed to move requires the Administration to establish searchable databases for both grants and contracts.”

“I’m pleased that the House leadership agreed with us that all federal spending should be accessible through this website. It doesn’t matter if it’s a grant, an earmark, or a contract, this legislation will allow the public to know how their tax dollars are being spent,” said Sen. Obama

“This bill is a small but significant step toward changing the culture in Washington. Only by fostering a culture of openness, transparency and accountability will Congress come together to address the mounting fiscal challenges that threaten our future prosperity. The group that deserves credit for passing this bill, however, is not Congress, but the army of bloggers and concerned citizens who told Congress that transparency is a just demand for all citizens, not a special privilege for political insiders. Their remarkable effort demonstrates that our system of government does work when the people take the reins of government and demand change,” Dr. Coburn said.

“I’m pleased that we’ve been able to work out an agreement to let this important legislation move to a vote in the House,” said Sen. Carper. “If we’re going to hold the federal government accountable for its performance, then we need to empower the public with basic information about who’s receiving federal dollars and what’s being done with them. This bill will shed some much-needed light on the activities of most federal agencies, allowing the public to decide for themselves whether their tax dollars are well spent.”

On June 21, the House unanimously passed HR 5060, the Blunt-Davis grants database bill. The Senate unanimously passed S 2590, the Coburn-Obama grants and contracts database bill, yesterday.

We may well get to see the receipts from the government’s shopping sprees — just as the Founders intended. This from a post by Larry Kudlow at the Corner:

“We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant’s books, so that every member of Congress and every man of any mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and consequently to control them.” -Thomas Jefferson

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UPDATE: Stevens unmasks himself!

Looks like there will be no surprises in the search for the "secret hold" Senator. A consensus is forming that the chief suspect, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), is blocking the "Google for government contracts" bill out of revenge for Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) successful campaign to defeat the "Bridge to Nowhere". The guys at TPM Muckraker, and a helpful reader, have pulled up a Fort Smith (Ark.) Times Record article from Aug. 18th which labels Stevens as the holder. Coburn also accuses Stevens of being the holder. Over at Redstate diarist Erick writes, "Last week, I called every senator’s office," except for the five chief cosponsors, and "only one would not give me a definitive "no."" That office was Sen. Stevens’ office.

Think Progress runs with the headline "Caught Red-Handed" and lists some of Stevens more egregious activities in securing funds that he might not want popping up in a government contracts database. My favorite: "Stevens earmarked $450,000 to research baby food made from salmon". A recommended diary at Daily Kos also pins the blame on the septugenarian Senator from Alaska, "Steven’s is putting personal revenge before the publics right to know where their money goes. Well that and a public record of Steven’s pork projects would probably be rather embarassing for him. Hell even the GOP’ers are tired of him."

So far, the Porkbusters site and TPM Muckraker have not definitively stated that Stevens is the "secret hold" Senator, he still remains in competition with three others, but for all intents and purposes it looks like this case is solved. Certainly calling up those remaining Senators to make sure that they aren’t the offender couldn’t hurt either. Check out the Porkbusters logo on the right-hand side to go and finalize this.

The left-right blogosphere partnership gets an analysis by William Beutler (of the Hotline’s Blogometer) at his blog, Blog P.I. Beutler calls it a "curious bipartisanship":

For one thing, this is the sort of thing TPM Muckraker and site overseer Josh Marshall do all the time — the right-blogosphere doesn’t pursue investigations quite so often (the most successful have been one-shots like the exposure of fraudulent Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj). … Indeed, the campaign is not especially partisan in nature, but fundamentally anti-insider in nature. If the PorkBusters bloggers can keep its momentum going in the next several months, with conservative blogs challenging Republicans and liberal blogs going after Democrats, it will reinforce the presumed anti-incumbent tenor of the midterm elections. 

That sounds about right to me. It’s not just both sides of the political spectrum, but most Americans, who are sick of the tinted windows and closed doors that not only keeps them from seeing what their government is up to, but keeps them from fully participating in the political process. How can the sovereign rule if they can’t know what’s going on? Sen. Stevens, out of petty revenge, is standing in the way of that very principle.

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Final Four Update: So a combination of Porkbusters and Muckraker tallies has the search for the "secret hold" Senator down to the Final Four. Is it Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), or Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)? The money is pick is Stevens who’s had it out for Coburn ever since the Oklahoma Senator killed the "Bridge to Nowhere". (Frist calls on all Senators to "honestly and transparently" answer whether they are the "secret Senator" when contacted by "the blog community".)

By now many of you know that an unnamed Senator (or Senators) placed a secret hold on the Coburn-Obama bill (the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act) that would create a searchable database of all federal contracts. Porkbusters has been on it since day one keeping a tally of Senators who have denied (or NOT denied) placing the secret hold. One thing that has come out of this example of unaccountable politicians is that transparency is a uniting issue bringing the Left and Right in the blogosphere together to defend the citizen’s right to know.

While Porkbusters has led the way on the effort to unmask the “secret-hold Senator” numerous others have lent their readership to the cause. The guys at Wonkette have called for the Senator’s unmasking along with other Left-leaning blogs Crooks & Liars, Mother Jones, TruthDig, and Daily Kos. TPM Muckraker is also directing its muckraking forces to help uncover the Senator’s identity.

The right wing bloggers, at GOP Progress, Instapundit, Tapscott’s Copy Desk, and Porkbusters, have clearly put some pressure on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Frist expressed anger at the secret hold placed by one of his colleagues in his blog and declared that when the Senate meets again in September he will make it a top priority to pass the transparency legislation.

Mark Tapscott, who testified in favor of the bill on hold, calls on Frist to act sooner telling the Majority Leader, “Here’s a clear-cut opportunity to demonstrate leadership and make a concrete difference in advancing genuine, much-needed reform in Washington. What are you waiting for, Mr. Senate Majority Leader?”

It’s great to see the two political sides uniting online to fight this abuse of Senate privilege but none of this needed to happen. Back in those heady days when reform was all the rage — you know, January — House and Senate leaders were all about fixing serious ethical issues (at least they said so) that had been festering for years. The Senate passed their version of lobbying and ethics reform called the Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006. One of the provisions in that bill would have mandated that all holds on legislation be submitted in writing and placed into the Congressional Record preventing the problem that we find ourselves in now. Unfortunately, ethics reform is dying a slow death in conference committee waiting for a congressman to be indicted so that it can finally be passed.

The best thing to do now is to find out whether your Senator is the secret holder. Go to Porkbusters for the action. So far 33 Senators are in the clear, according to the Porkbusters site. TPM Muckraker has updated that number to 35! As Ken Layne of Wonkette writes, “It’s like citizen journalism or something!”

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From Porkbusters:

Senators Tom Coburn and Barak Obama have proposed S. 2590, legislation that would create a single website with access to information on nearly all recipients of federal funding. The bill cannot proceed, however, because one or more Senators placed a “secret hold” on it.

Who is the secret holder? We want to know, and we want your help finding out. Call your Senator, and ask them to go on the record denying that they placed the hold. Then e-mail Porkbusters and let us know what they said! Senators who issue denials will be removed from the suspect list — and those who do not, won’t!

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