ShareThisWASHINGTON - House Republicans last month unveiled their Pledge to America, an ambitious and wide-reaching document that details their plans to shrink government, cut spending and repeal President Barack Obama's prized health care law, if voters return them to power next month.
Conspicuously absent from the 48-page pledge is any reference to earmarks, the spending directives that lawmakers slip into bills, usually for projects and programs in their home districts. That, experts and political insiders say, is because the GOP has yet to reach consensus over what to do about the controversial practice.
"There is some division within the (Republican) conference on that issue," said Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College. "Some members are more opposed (to earmarks) than others."
Annually, earmarked dollars represent less than 1 percent of the federal budget, but a series of congressional scandals -- involving both Republicans and Democrats -- has brought so-called "pork barrel spending" enough negative attention to prompt the GOP to declare an earmark moratorium for the current year.
Some Republicans defend the right of lawmakers to direct spending. Calif. GOP Rep. Jerry Lewis, one of the leading earmarkers in the House, points to the constitutional provision giving Congress the power of the purse, and argues that representatives of an area often know better than bureaucrats in Washington where money should be spent.
But others within his party want to extend the moratorium or give up the practice altogether as a demonstration fiscal restraint, said Steve Ellis, vice president for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group that tracks earmarks.
"They're all mixed up -- the conference is not entirely in agreement in what to do next," Ellis said. "Some would like to see nothing done. Some would like to see something like complete abolishment."
Publicly, Republicans say they are unified behind a commitment to end the kind of practices that led to the infamous $223 million "bridge to nowhere," which was meant to connect mainland Alaska to an island inhabited by 50 people, and the conviction of former Southern California Rep. Duke Cunningham, who was caught trading earmarks for bribes.
"It will be up to the next Congress," House GOP Leader John Boehner said of the earmark debate following a speech last week in Washington. "But I am here to tell you that we are not going to see earmarks as we've seen in the past under a Republican majority if I'm the speaker of the House."
Lewis, R-Redlands, and Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., another California appropriator who has been adept at steering earmarks to California, have backed Boehner's tough talk on earmarks. Both have said they would abide by whatever the Republican conference decides, and each has said action is needed to reform the process.
"Business isn't going to be as usual," Calvert said. "There's no doubt about that."
But Ellis of the taxpayer's group questioned whether the mere agreement among Republicans that something must be done would mean anything when the dust settles after the election.
"When you don't get down to specifics, it's easy to agree," he said.
(E-mail reporter Ben Goad at bgoad(at)PE.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
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