Even GOP Says McCain Must Accept Earmarks
)http://www.truthout.org/article/even-gop-says-mccain-must-accept-
earmarks
Out on the stump, John McCain gets wild applause each time he
promises as president to veto every spending bill that contains an
earmark.
But McCain will find it almost impossible to live up to his vow,
and gridlock would result if Congress refused to go along with such an
executive branch power grab.
And that's what members of McCain's own party are saying.
"I don't think it's the right approach," said Rep. Ralph Regula,
an Ohio Republican who has spent three decades on the House
Appropriations Committee. "I haven't done an earmark I wouldn't be
happy to have spread all over the front pages of the paper."
Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), a former Appropriations Committee
chairman, warns that both parties in Congress would protect their
power against a no-earmark policy.
"The Constitution is very specific and very clear about who
appropriates money," Young said. "Not all earmarks are pork-barrel
spending."
McCain has billed himself and his running mate as mavericks who
will stand up to foolish spending.
The campaign has pitched Sarah Palin as a governor who said "no
thanks" to an earmark for Alaska's "bridge to nowhere," although press
reports have established that she supported the earmark before she
opposed it.
Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican and member of the
Appropriations Committee, says he understands McCain's desire to crack
down on wasteful spending and kill the latest "bridge to nowhere." But
if a McCain administration suddenly started shooting down every
spending bill, lawmakers on both sides might revolt.
"The realistic outlook is for a great reduction in earmarks and a
real discussion about earmarks," Kingston said.
Because Congress has failed again to finish its spending bills on
time, the new president will likely receive a new omnibus spending
bill just after taking office. If McCain makes good on his campaign
promise, "he could veto it, and we'd probably override" the veto,
Kingston said.
Or, if there aren't enough votes to override a veto, "it could be
like 1995," when the government shut down, says David Williams, vice
president of policy for Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog
group.
The promise to veto any bill with congressional earmarks doesn't
take into account executive branch earmarks, which come by the scores
in the president's annual budget request. McCain has not promised to
get rid of the executive branch's line-item spending requests.
"What we would be doing is handing over all of our authority to
the administration," said Kirstin Brost, a spokeswoman for House
Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.). "We'd be saying
the White House, in its judgments, would decide what every community
in America needs."
McCain is not new to this earmark debate. It's one area where he
can still legitimately claim the maverick label. For years he has
taken to the Senate floor and read long lists of ridiculous-sounding
earmarks and clashed with Republican earmarkers such as Alaska Sen.
Ted Stevens.
And his campaign isn't backing away from the promise that he'll
veto any bill with earmarks, even if it would create a massive
showdown in his first days in office.
"He's someone who dedicated his career to taking on the status quo
and fighting an earmark process that breeds corruption," McCain
spokesman Brian Rogers said when asked Tuesday about congressional
resistance to an earmark ban. "If they're worthy [projects], then they
can be approved through an open process."
But as many veteran lawmakers point out, for every far-flung
Alaskan bridge project or hippie museum, there are dozens of other
earmarks that are politically palatable, like military base housing
improvements, levee upgrades and Veterans Affairs hospital wings.
And many of these are never requested by the executive agencies or
the White House.
Young points out that it was one of his earmarks back in the early
1990s that created the National Bone Marrow Registry. And the Predator
drone - an unmanned aircraft critical in the war on terrorism - was
created by a congressional earmark.
"What a President McCain could do is make Congress pay closer
attention to earmarks," Young said.
Even the watchdog groups, whose sole existence is to track and
criticize earmarks, admit that McCain's promise would be difficult to
carry out.
"It's going to be a challenge," said Steve Ellis, vice president
of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks government
spending. "It'll be a game of chicken [with Congress]. If he's
elected, he could claim a mandate on earmarks."
But that mandate would run smack into a handful of unmovable
objects on Capitol Hill, especially in the Senate, where old bulls
like Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and
former Chairmen Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and Stevens (R) have shown no
inclination to give up earmarks.
All of these senators are known as fierce defenders of the
constitutionally granted power of Congress to appropriate money.
And they're all well known for their earmarks.
"The idea that an all-knowing, all-powerful executive bureaucracy
is more trustworthy than the elected representatives of the people
when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars challenges the most basic
tenet of our political system," Byrd said in a statement. "An earmark
is an economic need that many times falls between the cracks of the
Washington bureaucracy. When that happens, the people we represent
cannot call some unelected bureaucrat in the White House budget
office."
Regula, a longtime appropriator who has been in the minority, the
majority and back in the minority in Congress, says the endgame is
simple - a compromise with the new president, whoever that is.
"There are a lot of campaign promises that will come up against
reality," Regula said. "It's one thing to go and say it on the trail.
It's another thing to do it in the real world."
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