In The Blogs

Charlie Wilson's War FY'08: New Defense Authorization Bill's 1,168 Earmarks

| Thu Jan. 24, 2008 12:34 AM PST

Good government group, Taxpayers for Common Sense' Laura Peterson writes, "With all the fuss about Bush putting the brakes on the 2008 defense authorization bill, which the Senate passed for the second time on Tuesday, one could almost forget about all the money the bill potentially contains. Authorization bills are intended to lay policy foundations for an agency, while the appropriations bills lay out the cash. Yet authorizations still contain earmarks—1,168 in this particular case, way more than the House version's 449 and the Senate's 309 combined. Even if authorization bills are passed after appropriations, as DoD's was this year, authorization earmarks are worth tracking because they often crop up as programs in the following years' budget request or pork added to future spending bills.

"Though we have not yet been able to database all the earmarks in the authorization conference report (you can see the House and Senate versions here) I have picked through them to ferret out 'airdrops,' meaning earmarks not included in previous versions. Some notable items:

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An undisclosed earmark for a $26 million study of an "upper-tier missile program" that fell out of the House defense appropriations bill was resurrected by Sens. Trent Lott (R-MS) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as a $10 million earmark.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) attached $17.3 million for an aircraft maintenance hangar at the Yeager Air National Guard installation and another $12 million for runway work at Shepherd Field in Martinsburg. The Shepherd Field runway is being expanded to accommodate a new C-5 Galaxy aircraft.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) added $1.5 million for a dining facility at Eglin Air Force Base outside Valparaiso, Florida.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) inserted $1.4 million for an Alaska National Guard readiness center in the town of Kanai.

Several military construction earmarks that went undisclosed in the Senate version of the bill found backers: Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) got $4.8 million for a blood donor facility at Fort Bragg, Inhofe added $3.3 million for a multi-purpose machine gun range at Fort Sill, and senators including Kit Bond (R-MO), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) added more than $35 million for five child development centers at military bases in their districts.

"More to come," says Peterson.

Comments

Submitted by Beltway Business As Usual (not verified) on Thu Jan. 24, 2008 6:51 PM PST.

But HOW can that BE?!?!

The Democratic majority in Congress PROMISED they'd do away with Spending Earmarks when they ran on the issue in the 2006 election.
It became "The Abramoff Plank" in the '06 Dem party platform.

They won a majority of both houses running on issues like that one, and on Getting Us the Hell OUT of Iraq. They passed a 'Reform' Bill, and claimed they'd 'delivered' on their campaign promise.

Then, when push came to shove back in the old "smoke-filled rooms" we find that what they REALLY Meant was:

[ Senate majority leader Harry Reid told the Senate parliamentarian that the new law only applied to spending bills, not to authorization or tax bills. That means that members had no opportunity to challenge specific projects on the floor of the House or Senate.

"Now, senators know that they can add projects with impunity to the authorization bill and no one can object. That's business as usual," says Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste.
...
In a Sept. 20 letter..., Sens. Reid and Feinstein wrote that there are "sound policy reasons" for treating authorization and spending bills differently. "Stronger safeguards are appropriate when Congress actually spends taxpayer money," they wrote. "But when Congress passes an authorizing bill, it is simply expressing a goal."

But critics note that the most infamous earmark of all, the $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska, was attached to an AUTHORIZING Bill.., NOT a Spending Bill!
...
One of the key venues for abuse, critics say, is "air-dropping" projects in conference. In other words, measures are added AFTER a bill has passed BOTH the House and Senate but before it goes back to both bodies for a final vote. That backroom tactic is what ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff called "The Favor Factory." It's where former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) of California, now serving an eight-year sentence after pleading guilty to corruption charges, linked earmarks to bribes without scrutiny. {..and the Democratic LeaderSheep has chosen to Leave It In Place!}
...
"These deals are being made Behind Closed Doors and Stuck in Conference, and that's just not right," says Adrianne Marsh, spokeswoman for Sen. Claire McCaskill(D-Mo) who has voted with some Republicans seeking stronger disclosure requirements for earmarks. "If a public project isn't worthy of public scrutiny it's not worthy of being funded." ]
Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1005/p01s01-uspo.html

Is it any wonder that many third party supporters tend to refer to the people who have been running our government as DemoPublicans and/or RepubliCrats?
Why so many disaffected voters from both parties have come to the conclusion that: "There Ain't a Dime's Worth of Difference", and either drop out of participation all together, or go with the mavericks in the parties or with the Greens or Libertarians?