Reform The Pork
For sometime now a lot of bloggers have been trying to open up the files and make transparent the legislation of where all the earmarks are going, who’s requesting it and who is getting it. All the bloggers are asking for is, give transparency a chance. The congress does not even have to give up the dependency on pork, just make it open for public view so that we can see how our money is being spent. Place it all in a database like you said you were going to do and let us see it.
From Fred Thompson’s Fred File: Real Earmark Reform Needed
During the last elections, the House Democrats’ campaign chief, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, was clear as a bell on earmarks. “For far too long,” he said, “business as usual has involved individual members doling out favors in appropriations and other bills through earmarks. The American people deserve to know more than who sponsored special interest legislation. They deserve earmark reform that puts an end to special interest earmarking and provides solutions to prevent the practice of earmark abuse.”
As a Republican, I was glad. It’s not that earmarks are inherently bad. Some serve important public purposes. But they need to be in the open, for all to see and evaluate, and their use needs to be significantly limited.
In January, the House and Senate both separately passed earmark reform but didn’t quite follow through, leaving the final wording to conference committee. As the last session ended, we finally saw the bill, worked out in secrecy by the current leadership. Republican Sen. Tom Coburn got it right when he said it “not only failed to drain the swamp, but gave the alligators new rights.”