Earmarking reform - a start, but with loopholes

They still don’t seem to get it – and we taxpayers may keep on paying for it.

After last year’s outcry over congressional “earmarking” – the long-standing practice that allows lawmakers to target anonymous, unaccountable “pork-barrel” spending items to favor pet projects, contractors or donors – and the then-GOP majority’s failure to deal with it, Democrats promised quick action on reforms. But while the rules changes on earmarks the House adopted last week – and the Senate is considering – sound good, they fall short of what’s needed to clean up the kind of corruption that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars a year.

The new House rules will make members submit detailed written requests for earmarks and certify that they and their spouses do not stand to gain financially from them. And the proposed earmarks in House legislation will be posted online. So far, so good. This would add the light of public disclosure, and would lessen practices such as one that was revealed by USA Today last year – special interests hiring the family members of lawmakers who arrange earmarks that benefit them.

But here’s the catch. As Citizens Against Government Waste points out, the new rules do not cover spending items that are earmarked for more than one state, and they do not cover earmarks meant to go to federal agencies. That latter loophole, notes Jacob Sullum on Reason magazine’s blog, would have allowed now-disgraced former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham to keep doing the very thing that eventually landed him in an Arizona prison – exchanging government contracts for bribes.

Many who gain power in Washington think they need earmarking authority to hold onto that power and stay in office. House Minority Leader John Boehner, who refuses to deal in pork projects, period, is living refutation of that “conventional wisdom.”

Earmarking has spawned an entire industry of special interests that almost inevitably leads to corruption -- think "Jack Abramoff." Congress should end the practice. The new rules may be a good start, but it’s only a start, and it’s full of loopholes. They should do better.