NYT: Budget Battles Without Earmarks

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/politics/27cong.html
(nytimes.com, so you'll want a bugmenot addon/extension installed...
or just read the article below)

Budget Battles Without Earmarks
By CARL HULSE
Published: February 26, 2011

WASHINGTON — The fact that Congress remains a spending disagreement or
two away from shutting down the government no doubt strikes some as
remarkable. But there is another extraordinary aspect to the fiscal
clash unfolding on Capitol Hill: earmarks have disappeared from the
budgetary landscape.

It is still sinking in for both those who have lavished money on
hometown projects and those who have spent years opposing earmarks
that the pork-barrel spending that has driven so many appropriations
measures through the House and Senate is, at least for now, at an end.

Even Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, who made battling earmarks a
cornerstone of his Congressional career since his election in 1990,
said he would not have predicted that Congress could kick the habit.

“Think of this fight we have had for 20 years,” Mr. Boehner said in a
recent interview. “If somebody would have asked me, ‘Will you ever get
there?’ I would have had my doubts.”

But through a confluence of events, Mr. Boehner and the rest of the
anti-earmark crowd did get there; the impact of the decision by
leaders of the House and the Senate to ban earmarks for at least the
next two years is already being felt.

When House Republicans were searching for cuts to offer Senate
Democrats as part of a temporary spending plan to avert a government
shutdown, they were able to reach into accounts set aside for earmarks
and find nearly $2.8 billion that would have previously gone to water
projects, transit programs and construction programs. No earmarks, no
need for that money, and the threat of an imminent shutdown was eased.

Lawmakers said the absence of earmarks also allowed for a more
freewheeling debate on the House floor during consideration of the
Republican plan to slash $61 billion from this year’s budget since
Democrats and Republicans were not caught up in protecting the special
provisions they had worked so hard to tuck into the spending bill.

“This is a completely new experience, and a good one,” said
Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who had lost scores
of attempts on the House floor to strip earmarks from spending bills.

While spending on earmarks is a tiny portion of the budget, critics
like Mr. Flake and Mr. Boehner said they played an insidious role in
pushing up federal spending through what is known in legislative terms
as logrolling.

Top members of the Appropriations Committee might, for instance, grant
a lawmaker’s request for a few million dollars for an important
project back home. That lawmaker would then be obligated to support
the entire multibillion-dollar bill despite possible reservations. Woe
to the person who gets an earmark and then opposes the bill; chances
for a future earmark would be somewhere between zero and none.

“You get millions for an earmark and end up voting for billions of
dollars that you may oppose,” said Steve Ellis, a vice president at
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government watchdog group.

Logrolling was just one aspect of earmarks seized on by critics. The
pursuit of such spending ended up in criminal charges in some cases as
certain lawmakers and lobbyists crossed the line between arguing for
an issue and conspiring to secure federal dollars. The burgeoning
practice fueled an entire industry where lawmakers relied on lobbyists
for campaign aid and lobbyists expected earmark help in return.

Given the hold that the push for earmarks had on both parties in
Congress, it took powerful forces to lead to a ban. Mr. Boehner may
have railed against them, but it took over-the-top examples like the
Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska to focus public attention on the practice.

At the same time, the two parties found themselves in a bidding war
over who was tougher on earmarks. Democrats imposed new transparency
rules, and Republicans, who had seen the number of earmarks skyrocket
during their decade of House control, had to counter with tougher
restrictions as they tried to re-establish their credibility on
controlling spending.

As the parties competed, the squeeze on earmarks steadily tightened,
much to the dismay of those who have spent much of their career
chasing such financing.

“One-upmanship finally caught up with them,” Mr. Ellis said.

Mr. Boehner, in his 2006 campaign to become the House Republican
leader, also pushed his colleagues to embrace earmark reform.

“I had to get them out of the transactional, day-to-day, who can do
what for me,” Mr. Boehner said. “I had to get them to think on a
higher plane.”

There were other important factors. As a senator, presidential
candidate and then president, Barack Obama had taken a stand against
earmarks. And some veteran lawmakers who had excelled at the inside
appropriations game — Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Ted Stevens of
Alaska, John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania — died, weakening the strong
defense that had been built around earmarks.

The wall finally tumbled down this year when Mr. Boehner, installed as
the new speaker, pushed a ban in the House and had the clout to make
it stick.

In the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a rabid earmarker, finally
took the cure. Then, under pressure from the White House, Senate
Democrats agreed to a ban, though Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the
majority leader, did so grudgingly, arguing that it was the job of
Congress to direct federal spending.

Whether prohibition will last is anyone’s guess. But with Congress now
so focused on cutting spending, it is doubtful that the days of
unbridled earmarking will return anytime soon.

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