More on Complexity of Earmark Reform

The House of Representatives is likely to deliver an important victory for reform this week. The Republican lobbying reform bill is likely to be approved, and while everyone agrees it could go further, it does contain some important measures.

As I've noted before (here and here), reforming the earmark process is pretty tricky. Even in the House, the entrenched powers are strong - but they are much stronger in the Senate. This makes it likely that the two chambers will consider earmarks under different sets of rules - which is odd, though definitely not unprecedented.

The Hill does a good job today of laying out the challenges that will face conferees on the reform legislation:

Earmark reform deal in the House raises eyebrows in Senate
By Elana Schor and Jonathan Allen

As the House approaches today’s still-uncertain vote on its leadership-backed lobbying overhaul bill, the earmark-reform deal struck late last week by appropriators, conservatives and leaders continues to face a questionable fate in conference.

One aide to a senior Senate appropriator said his boss would fight hard to preserve the upper chamber’s earmark-reform language, which calls for all appropriations, tax and authorization bills to contain “an explanation of the essential government purpose” of each earmark they contain — a requirement notably absent from the House version.

“I would think he’d be very strongly wedded to the Senate’s particular language because it was the product of a lot of negotiations on the Senate side — good-faith, bipartisan negotiations,” the aide said...

On the Senate side, however, Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) played a key role in crafting earmark-reform language that could satisfy appropriators, working with the bill’s floor manager, Senate Rules Committee Chairman Trent Lott (R-Miss.). Both senators are institutionally driven and could be loath to cede ground on congressional rules changes during conference on the lobbying bill.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) has abandoned fellow Appropriations members on recent earmark-related floor votes, siding with fellow conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on efforts to strip projects from the emergency war supplemental. Brownback said he is in favor of whatever will break the logjam on earmark reform.

Still, he warned, “Sometimes these efforts to broaden it are really attempts to kill it.” Though it is early May, he said the Senate is already moving “on a molasses pace,” which could hurt the bill’s chances.

“I’m worried that we’re going to run out of time,” he said...

House appropriators protested a requirement that only their committee’s bills contain labeled lists of member earmarks and threatened to oppose the whole bill unless that provision is extended to tax and authorizing legislation.

Conferees on the lobbying bill will face a number of challenges in writing earmark-reform provisions that would change House and Senate rules. It is unclear whether the same language would be required to apply to both chambers or whether separate new points of order could be established in a conference report.

The dispute in the House over whether earmark reforms will cover only appropriations bills, or also bills produced by Transportation and Ways and Means, is central. While I would prefer that the rule be equally applied to bills from the transportation committee, you could argue that transportation bills already operate under this type of system, de facto. This is because you can pretty much always tell who requested a transportation project, because it is located in that Member's district.

David Dreier's Rules Committee website does a great job of laying out what the House will be voting on this week. Read through the amendment summaries, and call your Representative.

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