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Republican earmark reforms from 2006 gutted by new leadership

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx today vowed to fight secrecy in the federal spending process after Democratic lawmakers decided to keep individual spending requests secret until August—months after the House votes on spending bills that will contain the requests. The powerful Appropriations Committee will be inserting the spending requests—or earmarks—after the bills pass the House, effectively cutting off debate on potentially wasteful or controversial items.

“Instead of the transparency and accountability they promised, the Democrats’ spending bills will essentially include a slush fund for billions of dollars in earmarks hidden from public scrutiny, said Foxx. “I honestly can’t believe it. These taxpayer-backed slush funds will fund earmarks without actually putting them into the bills before the House votes.”

“American’s don’t want more secrecy, they want less. As the Baltimore Sun wrote yesterday, the Democrats’ new rules have ‘made the process exponentially worse,’” Foxx said. “We must restore accountability to the process lest the path to corruption is paved smooth by Congress’ neglect.”

The new procedures make it impossible for Representatives to challenge individual earmarks so long as the legislation merely contains a list of such earmarks. This is a change from the Republican-enacted rules which allowed House members to challenge individual taxpayer-funded earmarks before a bill passed the House of Representatives.

“Shining the light of public scrutiny into Congressional spending will improve accountability and fiscal responsibility,” Rep Foxx said. “But the majority has done the opposite, and I am appalled by their attempts to shroud the process in secrecy and drop earmarks into bills via a last minute slush fund.”

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