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Majority Eyes Earmark BanMarch 8, 2010
*By Tory Newmyer
Roll Call Staff*

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As they try to reclaim the ethical high ground during a difficult stretch,
House Democratic leaders are considering a dramatic move: declaring a
party-wide ban on earmarks this year.

The idea, floated by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a leadership huddle
Tuesday, is for House Democrats to outflank their Republican counterparts,
who have mulled and rejected such a moratorium in recent years.

The discussion was brief and inconclusive, sources with knowledge of the
session said. Leaders decided they needed to explore it further with
Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.). But if top Democratic brass
decides to embrace the ban, it would likely have far-reaching consequences —
and meet stiff resistance from some corners of the Democratic Caucus that
cherish earmarks as a constitutionally protected legislative prerogative and
a political necessity in an increasingly hostile environment for incumbents.

For the current fiscal year alone, members of both parties in both chambers
secured 9,499 earmarks worth a total of $15.9 billion, according to a study
by Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The Democratic proposal in part reflects a calculation by leaders that their
earmarks could get scrapped anyway. With the Senate struggling to handle
even routine business, House leaders believe their spending bills might well
end up tangled in an end-of-year morass in the other chamber, leaving their
projects on the cutting room floor as lawmakers roll spending measures into
a single package.

“Why fight the pain and take that hit when most of these bills aren’t even
going to the president’s desk?” one leadership aide said.

No leader raised strong objections to the idea last week, sources said. But
Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Xavier Becerra (Calif.) argued that if the
majority pursues the ban, it needs to be wholesale, shutting off the
targeted spending for both public and private entities.

A decision on the matter would likely need to happen quickly — earmark
requests are due to the Appropriations panel by March 19. But some aides
said leaders have some wiggle room on the timeline since the
spending-bill-writing process won’t kick into high gear until later this
spring.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio),
said Republicans would welcome the policy. “For more than two years, we’ve
been asking House Democrats to join us in an earmark moratorium and real
earmark reform,” he said in a statement. “I hope they are finally ready to
get serious about ending their out-of-control spending spree, which is
scaring the hell out of the American people.”

The discussion among Democratic leaders came at the top of what was a
damaging week on the ethics front. Leaders at the time were in the middle of
dealing with the crisis surrounding Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) as he tried
to hang on to his Ways and Means gavel after an ethics admonishment. Facing
a full-blown collapse of support among junior Democrats, Rangel surrendered
his chairmanship Wednesday morning.

Bill Clark/Roll Call

Rep. Sander Levin won the Ways and Means gavel after embattled Rep. Charlie
Rangel stepped aside.
Just hours later, leaders were facing a new controversy after reports
surfaced that freshman Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) had been accused of sexually
harassing a male staffer — allegations that the ethics committee is probing.
Massa announced that day he would not seek re-election, pointing to a recent
cancer diagnosis. By Friday afternoon, however, he released a statement
announcing his resignation and taking responsibility for ethics problems he
described as “mine and mine alone.”

While Republicans were largely quiet on the Massa mess, they lashed
Democrats for standing by Rangel for months while he faced multiple ethics
allegations. Boehner, calling Rangel’s decision to step aside “appropriate,”
took Pelosi and other leaders to task for having defended him for so long —
“especially after promising to preside over the most honest, open and
ethical Congress in history.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee, meanwhile, hammered
Democrats for hanging on to Rangel’s campaign contributions and kept score
as Members rushed to return them. As of Friday morning, the committee noted
that $418,000 in his largess had either been returned or given to charity.

Taking stock even as the controversies raged, top Democrats last week said
they believe they are in a strong position to weather the political fallout
of their recent pileup of ethics troubles. They pointed to the fact that the
midterm elections are eight months away, that Republicans are still battling
plenty of problems of their own, and that their failings, while damaging,
also proved that the moribund ethics process they inherited from the GOP is
now fully functional and weeding out bad actors.

“We’ve got to introduce the pot to the kettle here if they’re talking about
ethics,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), vice chairwoman of the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, “because they had an ethics
system that was totally nonfunctional. Instead of addressing their Members’
ethics concerns, they swept them under the rug, stalled and fostered the
culture of corruption. We made sure we created a system where we could shine
a light on it and when there is a problem, that a member gets called out on
it and is held accountable.”

Rep. Joe Crowley (N.Y.), also a DCCC vice chairman and the man charged with
trying to rally support for Rangel last week, warned Republicans against
trying to make too much of Democratic missteps lest it backfire. “I don’t
think they should get too high on the hog on human frailties here,” he said.
“They have their own human frailties they need to be mindful of, as well.”

But the party is newly sensitized to the political threat of letting the GOP
brand it as entitled and out of touch — an awareness on display as Democrats
fumbled Rangel’s succession on Ways and Means last week. After Rangel
stepped aside Wednesday, the gavel passed to the panel’s second-in-line,
Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), a veteran with a long history of off-color
remarks and ethics troubles of his own. But committee members balked at
Stark’s promotion and met for hours on Wednesday to consider how to hand the
chairmanship to a less controversial figure.

During an afternoon meeting that day, Becerra and Rep. Chris Van Hollen
(Md.), both members of leadership, made the case to Stark that his record
would make him an inviting target for Republicans and a distraction for
politically endangered Democrats, sources familiar with the session said.
Committee members settled on third-ranking panel member Rep. Sander Levin
(D-Mich.), who assumed the position Thursday.

Meanwhile, the newest House Democrats, many of whom were elected on promises
to change the way Washington does business, are pushing their own proposals
for ethics and process reforms.

As of Friday morning, freshman Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) had rounded up
22 co-sponsors for a bill that would cut lawmakers’ pay by 5 percent
starting next year. (She noted in an interview that she is already
voluntarily giving back that amount of her pay). And members of the freshman
class are set to meet this week to finalize a package of reforms they have
been working on for months.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), an organizer of the effort, said they include
banning campaign contributions from directors and managers of earmark
recipients, forbidding lawmakers from making stock trades based on insider
knowledge of legislation, and overhauling the per diem system lawmakers use
on overseas trips that frequently leaves them with taxpayer dollars in their
pockets.

“We came in at a time when we realized the American people are frustrated
and angry,” Kirkpatrick said. “We know we’re being held to a higher
standard.”
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Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co