House Passes Earmark Reform

House Passes Earmark Reform

This month the House of Representatives returned from Summer recess to work on issues which are grabbing headlines across the nation.

While we are working on ways to help protect America's Homeland, and secure the nation's borders, we have also succeeded in helping protect the People's hard-earned money from frivolous pork barrel spending by forbidding anonymous spending in the House.

Earlier this month, I was proud to vote for the passage of H.Res. 1000, which changed a House rule to prevent us from inserting "earmarks" - or targeted spending - into legislation without the name of the Representative behind the earmark being known.

An earmark is defined as "a provision that allocates funds outside of the normal formula-driven or competitive bidding process and targets those funds to a specific entity, state or congressional district," - in other words: money for pet-projects who do not go through the normal scrutiny other spending legislation goes through.

Earmarks must be listed not only for bills coming out of committees, but also in conference reports and amendments adopted on the House floor.

This doesn't prevent earmarks from future legislation, but it will give greater transparency to the process so you can hold us accountable for inserting money that may seem "questionable."

I would like to quote my friend from Texas, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, with whom I am proud to serve on the House Republican Study Committee, who spoke on the need for earmark reform on the House floor:

"$273,000 to implement garden mosaics at a local university," he said, listing examples of earmarks inserted anonymously. "$179,000 to produce hydroponic tomatoes; $550,000 for a museum of glass; $400,000 for an Italian market in the Bronx; and a half a million dollars for buses at Disneyland.

Mr. Speaker there are many worthy earmarks, worthy of this institution. But today there are still too many that do not pass the smell test, that do not pass the laugh test, and certainly do not pass the fiscal responsibility test," he concluded.

Fiscal responsibility, how we spend the people's money, is one of the prime tasks facing us in Congress. The manner in which we accomplish this task will be one of the ways we will be judged in the future. I feel our action on earmarks is an important first step toward reforming the way we do business in Washington and toward restoring the public's confidence that the legislative process is based on integrity and not on the influence of special interests.

As many of you know, before you elected me to represent you in Congress, I was a small business owner, helping found an eye clinic in Rogers. As any small business owner knows, every penny must be accounted for and spending beyond your means eventually leads to the business failing.

It is my hope our step forward in banning anonymous spending leads to many more steps toward winnowing away the pork from federal spending, taking even more power away from the influence of lobbyists, and reducing our deficit.

As we move forward, I would like to see my colleagues in the House and my friends in the Senate continue this important work toward reforming the way we do our business. One way in particular is the line-item veto. In June of this year, I was proud to join 246 other members of the House in passing H.R. 4890, the Legislative Line Item Veto Act of 2006, which gives the President the power single-out items contained in appropriations bills, and would require Congress to vote on those items again.

This legislation, as of this writing, has been read for a second time in the Senate and placed on its calendar.

You may remember the Congress giving President Clinton line-item veto power ten years ago. However, the Court found in Clinton v. City of New York that the veto violated the Presentment Clause in Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution.

It is unclear whether the 2006 version of the line-item veto will pass constitutional muster, should it pass the Senate and be signed into law, which is why I strongly support amending the Constitution to allow the President the power of 43 state governors, including the Governor of Arkansas.

It is my hope we can take the success of earmark reform, join it with the line-item veto and other mechanisms so we can create good spending habits in Congress, which will lead to balanced budgets, lower taxes, less inflation, economic growth and, more importantly, restored trust by the people whom we serve in Washington.

http://boozman.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=50291