Waiting for fine print on earmark requests...
By Bill Allison Jan 06 2009 8:05 p.m.Over on Sunlight's grown up blog, I noted this Roll Call story on new earmark disclosures that the chairs of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees agreed to. Looking at the Gavel Blog of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it appears that the disclosures may be less than meets the eye. Taking the new rules in order...
Posting Requests Online: To offer more opportunity for public scrutiny of member requests, members will be required to post information on their earmark requests on their websites at the time the request is made explaining the purpose of the earmark and why it is a valuable use of taxpayer funds.
Note that there's no mention of disclosing the recipient of the earmark. Congressman X can say he's requesting an earmark to buy $600 hammers for the Pentagon because they're critical for meeting the needs of the modern soldier without ever mentioning that Boondoggle Inc., his biggest contributor, is their manufacturer. Update: Tammy Hughes, an administrative aide with the House Appropriations Committee, said she believes that recipients will be disclosed. end update
Early Public Disclosure: To increase public scrutiny of committee decisions, earmark disclosure tables will be made publically [sic] available the same day as the House or Senate Subcommittee rather than Full Committee reports their bill or 24 hours before Full Committee consideration of appropriations legislation that has not been marked up by a Senate Subcommittee.
Here's what an earmark table looks like -- this is from the 2008 Defense Appropriations Conference Report, and it's hard to navigate, but note here too that there are no recipients listed.
So we're still left with the disclosure letters--which only House members are required to file--as the sole means of finding out which companies and organizations are favored with earmarks. And no mention of those being released any earlier...
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