‘Rewriting the law’ is taken to a whole new level

‘Rewriting the law’ is taken to a whole new level

Imagine if Congress passed a law — both the House and the Senate — and then one or two people with their own agenda managed to rewrite even a sentence of that law without anyone ever knowing. That almost happened, but the change — a $10 million switch in the pork-filled 2005 highway bill — was noticed. It’s being corrected, and eventually whoever attempted to pull one over on the rest of Congress may be held to account. Maybe.

The 2005 highway bill contained an earmark — a lawmaker’s pet project — for $10 million to widen and improve I-75 in Ft. Myers, Fla. After the bill was passed by both the House and the Senate but before it went to the president, staffers for GOP Rep. Don Young of Alaska, a master of the pork process, changed the earmark to fund an interchange on I-75. That would have materially benefited developers who owned 4,000 acres next to the proposed interchange. And who, it so happened, had raised $40,000 for Young.

When the change came to light a while ago, some lawmakers were outraged. But no one in the House was apparently outraged enough to go after Young.

The Senate tires of waiting

Now the Senate has forced the hand of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic and Republican House leaders. In a bipartisan vote, 64 to 28, the Senate voted last week to ask for a federal criminal investigation into how the earmark was altered.

That got the attention of the House.

“I’m highly skeptical that the Congress can direct the executive [branch] as to what cases they ought to look into,” said House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri.

Pelosi said the Senate vote is an unconstitutional intrusion of one legislative body on the other. She now suggests it is a matter for the House ethics committee,

And indeed it is, except that until now the House ignored calls — including some from influential members of the Senate — that an ethics investigation be launched.

“Mr. Young’s office has welcomed any inquiry or examination of the earmark, and I would support that as well,” said House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio. “I think it’s in everyone’s interest that we know what happened and did not happen here.”

It’s a sad commentary when the Senate must take extraordinary action to get the House to investigate a fraud on the American people and an assault on constitutional government by a House member or a member of his staff.

All 535 members of Congress should have been incensed by the unilateral rewriting of a law that had been passed by both chambers. The incident sheds new light on how insidious (not to mention expensive) legislative earmarks have become and why even more has to be done to rein them in.