Lawmakers continue to pursue pet projects

Democratic leaders had agreed with President Bush that
earmarks should be cut in half.

WASHINGTON (AP) — New ethics rules designed to cleanse spending bills of questionable pet projects have done little to quench lawmakers’ thirst for them. Demand is up and the battle for them is as fierce as ever.

While House Democrats are holding to their promise to cut in half the price tag on back-home projects, familiar poobahs of pork in both parties have larded spending bills with more than 10,000 of them totaling at least $10 billion. Many more are to come.

The 435 members of the House together requested more than 32,000 pet projects this year — several thousand more than in 2006, when scandal-embarrassed Republican leaders limited how many each lawmaker could seek.

Only about 6,000 projects totaling $5 billion made it into the dozen spending bills passed by the House this summer, but members were promised they would get a chance to add military construction projects this fall.

Upon taking control of the House in January, Democratic leaders agreed with President Bush that earmarks should be cut in half from the 13,492 totaling $18.9 billion in 2005.

House Democrats are congratulating themselves for reaching what they say is their share of that target.

“At the beginning of this year I told members I wanted to cut the total dollar amount of earmarks in half for appropriate accounts,” said Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis. “A lot of folks are unhappy about it, but over the summer we passed every appropriations bill, and I’m proud to say we met that goal.”

In the Senate

The Senate has a costlier set of earmarks. There, Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., puts the total so far for senators’ earmarks also at about $5 billion — with billions more to come in a $459 billion Pentagon spending bill, always the most earmark-laden measure of all.

Byrd never bought into the Bush-House pledge, promising only to cut pet projects by an unspecified amount. As always, he hasn’t been shy about shoveling federal money into West Virginia, such as $2 million in renovations to a riverfront park in Charleston and $4 million to construct a multiple sclerosis center at West Virginia University.

Byrd’s totals, however, are eclipsed by those of the two top Republicans on the panel, former chairmen Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Ted Stevens of Alaska, as well as Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., according to data compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based budget watchdog group.

New rules require House members and senators sponsoring so-called earmarks to identify themselves and attest they don’t get any financial reward from them. The White House calls Congress’ actions so far encouraging but is holding its applause.

“The proof of whether they are serious will be when congressional funding efforts are based on merit and the process is transparent, rather than the current congressional system, which is based on seniority and geography,” said Sean Kevelighan, a White House budget office spokesman.

Greatest share

Not surprisingly, the list of House members claiming the greatest share of projects for their districts also reads like a Who’s Who of leaders and senior members of the pork-distributing Appropriations Committee.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has reaped $77 million worth of projects in and around her San Francisco district, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense data.

But Pelosi is far behind the most senior Appropriations Committee members, including Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the panel’s No. 2 Democrat and chairman of the defense subcommittee.

Murtha is responsible for at least $186 million in earmarks, almost double the haul of Appropriations Chairman Obey, who’s shipped about $95 million to his rural Wisconsin district.

Republicans who once held Obey’s job rank only behind Murtha as the biggest recipients of pet projects this year. They are Reps. C.W. Bill Young of Florida, at $142 million, and Jerry Lewis of California, $120 million.

“There’s definitely a pecking order. It’s the powerful, then the (politically) vulnerable, then the run of the mill,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “If you happen to be represented by a freshman Republican in a safe seat, good luck.”