Panel considers limits on lawmakers' earmark requests
Proposal looks to reduce the overall number of requests from about 35,000 each year to a more manageable number.
The House Appropriations Committee is considering a proposal to limit the number of earmark requests each lawmaker can submit in a given fiscal year, responding to pressure from GOP leaders to address recent influence-peddling scandals plaguing Republicans.
The plan, which is still being fleshed out, would standardize procedures used by the panel's 11 subcommittees to evaluate requests while "sharply reducing" the number of allowable requests from each member, a Republican panel aide said.
House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., discussed the idea Friday with subcommittee chairmen, and it will be part of an earmark overhaul package he is expected to submit to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., by the end of this week.
The aim would be to cut the overall number of requests from roughly 35,000 each year to a more manageable number, to better enable staff to weed out less meritorious proposals and make members prioritize their requests.
The plan also might be coupled with requirements that projects' sponsors be listed in the Congressional Record; that earmark request letters be made public; that standards be made stricter to ensure that agency accounts are not used for unrelated projects, i.e., an Interior earmark in a Transportation-Treasury spending bill; and that more emphasis be put on projects with state or local government support and perhaps even matching funds, rather than projects administered by nonprofit groups with unclear backing.
The Senate also is looking at changes in the earmarking process, including disclosure of projects' sponsors as well as their justifications. Thus far, the Senate Appropriations Committee has not considered numerical limits on senators' requests, but there is general acknowledgement that the recent influence-peddling scandals might prompt restraint.
"I think it is fair to say that earmarks in general will be subject to greater scrutiny, but there are no plans right now to set an arbitrary number on how many projects a member can request," a panel spokeswoman said.
House GOP leaders, prodded by the appropriators, also are considering applying similar standards for earmarks in tax bills and other authorizing legislation, such as the transportation reauthorization bill, which contained roughly $24 billion in earmarks.
Meanwhile, Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who backs a proposal to include earmarks in the text of spending bills so opponents can offer floor amendments to strip them, wrote Hastert Monday that since earmarks often are inserted behind closed doors "simply requiring that names be attached to earmarks will do nothing to change this secrecy."
Flake has not requested an earmark since 2002, in the fiscal 2003 Defense spending bill. During debate on the fiscal 2003 omnibus bill in early 2003, in which Flake criticized the measure's earmarks, Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., responded that Flake had requested $160 million in Defense earmarks.
"We have got to be sure that we come here with clean hands when we speak," Rogers told Flake, to which Flake responded, "There is a difference between the National Cowgirls Hall of Fame and funding aviator night vision imaging systems for our helicopters."