Blunt Steps Up Earmark Damage Control
Demonstrating an ongoing concern with his record of supporting earmarks in Washington, Roy Blunt today signed on as a co-sponsor of a GOP plan to ban earmarks for one whole year. It's not exactly a bold stand for Blunt -- all but 12 Republicans agreed to co-sponsor the resolution, sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA).
If there's ever been an election year about-face, this is it. Blunt has been a "proud and prolific earmarker" in Congress, and many of the Republicans hoping to take his Seventh Congressional District have openly distanced themselves from his record on the issue. For instance, Sen. Jack Goodman has described the earmarking practice celebrated by Blunt and Sen. Kit Bond as "awful."
In 2007, a Center for Public Integrity investigation showed that Blunt was the only member of the Congressional leadership to participate in a controversial method of providing earmarks to those represented by former-staffers-turned lobbyists.
Also in 2007, the editorial board of the Springfield News-Leader hammered the Velvet Hammer for playing "games" with earmarks, noting that he "allowed earmarks to get out of control during an era of no accountability."
As printed June 16, 2007:
EARMARK REFORM NEEDS TO START NOW
Springfield News-Leader
June 16, 2007 SaturdayWhen Congressman Roy Blunt is calling Democrats to task for their hypocritical position on secrecy regarding federal earmarks, something must be terribly, terribly wrong.
Indeed, something is wrong, and it's that House Democrats have already forgotten their promise to reform the system by which Congress secretly spends billions of federal dollars in sometimes wasteful projects back home. The practice, called earmarking, was a target for national Democrats as they broke many years of Republican control of Congress.
They promised to reform the process, to bring transparency, to reduce the overspending, undisciplined ways of their Republican opponents. And now what have they done? Played the same old games that got the Republicans in trouble.
Blunt knows a thing or two about those games. He was one of the leaders in a Republican Congress that allowed earmarks to get out of control during an era of no accountability. And a month ago he said he wouldn't tell Gannett News Service which earmarks he was proposing until after the appropriations committee voted on them. Those transgressions aside, his criticism is still on target. Blunt this week chided Democrats, specifically Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, for failing to follow through on a promise to be more open about the earmarks process.
Obey had said he would not release publicly the list of earmarks to be inserted into appropriations bill until after the bill gets House and Senate approval and goes to conference committee. That action would have negated the ability to debate the validity of the various earmarks, a central element of the reform Democrats promised.
Blunt and others called the ridiculous bluff.
"The potential for abuse in proceeding along a course this invulnerable to scrutiny is obvious," Blunt wrote in a column that appeared on the conservative blog Human Events. "...on the crucial issue of earmarks, it appears they've marched 10 steps back at a time when our country expects and deserves precisely the opposite approach."
The good news is that after pressure from Republicans and spending watchdog groups, Obey has relented and promised that all earmarks and their sponsors will be listed in The Congressional Record a full month before they come up for approval. But he also implied a threat against Republicans who might dare use an opportunity on the floor to criticize certain earmarks.
That's the point of the process that members of both parties of Congress have forgotten over the years. The debate is important. Some earmarks are better than others, and they ought to be able to withstand a little heated discussion. Our elected officials ought to be able to be disciplined enough to only support the most important earmarks and to put their name on the dotted line of any proposal they support from the beginning of the process until the end.
Only then will taxpayers' interests be properly and transparently represented.
But now voters are asked to believe that Roy Blunt is on the side of those who want to reform or end the earmark process. Please.
Image credit: SGF-Branson-Airport.com
