Word: earmark
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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After the collapse of a Minneapolis highway bridge that killed 13 people in August, critics lashed out at the lack of federal spending on basic infrastructure maintenance. Remarkably, Congress nonetheless plans to earmark more than $2 billion in the transportation-appropriations bill for frivolous home-district projects. Here's a plate of pork projects from the bill's House and Senate versions that won't make our roads any safer...
...they still serve as a symbolic line in the sand. Increasingly, though, the group has started winning votes. Although the group's signature concern has been spending, their biggest victory was killing the immigration bill. They also held up the lobbying reform bill until much more stringent controls on earmark spending were included. Last December, just days after he was elected head of the Steering Committee, DeMint brought down his own party's attempt to pass the remaining 2007 appropriations bills, saving the government $17 billion by forcing it to resort to 2006 levels. And in 2005, Coburn...
...earmark explosion - a 1,200% increase since the 1991 bill - was a symptom of this mindless goodie-bagging. And Young, who is now the subject of a federal corruption investigation, was by no means the only offender. Democratic Congressman James Oberstar of Minnesota - his successor as chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee - bragged about bagging 57 "high-priority projects" for his district in the bill, including a visitor center at Mesabi Station, a bridge for snowmobiles in Onamia and a new $3 million highway between County Road 565 in Hoyt Lakes and the intersection of Highways...
...DeMint and Coburn are unhappy with a rule that would allow Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and his committee chairmen - rather than the body?s parliamentarian - to determine whether earmark disclosure rules have been complied with. It's a technical point, admits DeMint, but a key one. "One of the reasons Americans have such a low opinion of Congress is that we pretend to do things that we don't actually do, and here we are just pretending to pass real reform," he said. "The [majority] leader can just say that no new earmarks have been added...
...Which, of course, a cynic would say is precisely why passage of the measure looks likely, with the House overwhelmingly voting in favor on Tuesday and the Senate expected to push its portion through by week's end. "Our bill establishes workable rules for full earmark disclosure. Apparently a handful of Senators are desperate to slow down passage of the most comprehensive ethics reforms in American history," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley, who reiterated the Majority Leader's threat to cut into his members' precious recess time if the legislation is held...