Word: earmark
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...revolving door that helps perpetuate the cozy world of lobbying for such favors as earmarks-the suddenly controversial system by which the House and Senate Appropriations Committees dish out tens of billions of dollars in pork from the $843 billion a year in discretionary spending they doled out for this year. President Bush and new House Majority Leader John Boehner are now calling for reform of the clubby earmark game. But Appropriations Committee members and the many other pork enthusiasts in Congress have long staved off such change-partly because constituents have seldom got mad at their own representatives...
...Despite these distractions, the House and Senate seem likely to eventually pass some limited changes: greater transparency of which members of Congress have put an earmark into a bill, more disclosure of gifts and contacts of lobbyists with lawmakers, and stricter rules on former congressional staffers or members taking lobbying jobs. But the more dramatic reforms being discussed immediately post-Abramoff, like stopping lawmakers from using corporate jets and "leadership PACs"-which aspiring congressional leaders use to dole out money to and curry favor with other members, and often have lobbyists serving as treasurers-now have a much smaller chance...
...symptom of lobbying run amuck is the proliferation of earmarks--spending placed in legislation, often without public review, for specific projects. "Beating up on lobbyists is easy to do, but we have to put our own house in order, and at the top of that list is earmark reform," says Republican Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona. The most famous recent earmark was last fall's so-called Bridge to Nowhere--a provision that Representatives from Alaska inserted into a bill to spend close to $223 million to make it easier to reach a virtually uninhabited area of the state...
...three candidates have suggested that they would support earmark limits, a favorite McCain cause. Only Boehner has been specific about what he would change, saying he would try to prevent federal dollars from going to private entities for exclusively private purposes. This still wouldn't stop wasteful spending on unneeded bridges and other projects. But one plan would identify the sponsors of earmarks and force members to defend them, eliminating the many mysterious entries that now bristle in the budget. Blunt defends earmarks but has proposed tracking those who request them and how the money is spent. Boehner and Shadegg...
...make like a freshman girl and flirt his way into clubs. It’s more than a little creepy, but it’s maybe the single greatest hope for undergraduate social life this side of Phatt Boyz. Though University President Lawrence H. Summers recently promised an earmark of “several million” dollars to help resuscitate social life, money alone cannot solve social life woes. Loker Commons cost $10 million to build in 1995; the Harvard College Pub will likely cost less but, if student leaders are right, return much more. For that, undergraduates will...