POLITICS: See How They Spend
Fund, John H.
POLITICS ,JohH l / . Fund ~ FTER A YEAR OF HEADLINES about runaway federal spending and wasteful pork-barrel projects, fiscai conservatives finally won both an important and symbolic victory...
...Ted Stevens was compelled to admit he had placed the hold on the bill...
...We are already fully transparent on earmarks [the legislative vehicles that allow members to slip pork-barrel projects into legislation]," he insisted to me...
...That's when Alaska Sen...
...I stood here and watched Senator [James] Allen [a leading Democratic segregationist of the 1960s] teach the Senate lesson after lesson after something was done to Alabama that he didn't like...
...I come to warn the Senate, if you want a wounded bull on the floor of the Senate, pass this amendment" he thundered...
...I promise people:' With that warning hanging in the air, it's no surprise the Coburn amendment went down 8215, with only eleven Republicans and four Democrats voting in favor...
...Although it sounds like simple good-government legislation, the bipartisan measure by Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Barack Obama of Illinois was viewed as a direct threat by members of Congress's "favor factories," the Appropriations Committees that ladle out federal largesse...
...Jeff Flake of Arizona, the House's leading earmark opponent...
...Immigration and tax cuts lagged behind...
...The Porkbusters bloggers can't wait to set their cursors on that new federal database...
...Last October, Stevens had a meltdown on the Senate floor when Cobum proposed shifting $125 million from the bridge to rebuild a bridge near New Orleans that had been damaged by Hurricane Katrina and then sendthe rest of the moneybacktoAlaska for other projects, as long as they didn't include the Ketchikan bridge...
...The House bill, authored by MajorityWhip Roy Blunt and Government Reform chairman Tom Davis, would have had the new searchable website include data on federal grants but would exclude information on contracts and other spending...
...I N ROUND TWO of the Stevens-Coburn bout, the bloggers this fail did force the Alaskan to release his hold on the Coburn transparency bill...
...1 priority before the close of this session...
...I don't threaten people...
...John H. Fund, The American Spectator's Politics columnist, is author of Stealing Elections: HowVoter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books...
...Dick Durbin for displeasing him...
...Although he claimed to me that he wasn't even aware of the provisions of the bill and had merely placed a hold on it to protest some of Coburn's holds on other legislation, it became clear the bill bothered him...
...An April Wall StreetJournal/NBC poll found that 39 percent of Americans wanted Congress to make an end to "directing federal funds to specific projects benefiting only certain constituents" its No...
...Byrd's office said he merely wanted to slow things down so the bill could get a thorough and open debate, but he lost interest in that debate after being outed by the bloggers...
...Members of Congress were too addicted to earmarks to take more than baby steps against them this year, which is why reformers like Senator Coburn expect the battle to curb earmarks to resume in earnest next year...
...Senator Stevens was not amused...
...Robert Byrd, a pork-barreler of such awesome repute that it is said he would relocate the entire federal government to his home state of West Virginia if he could, admitted the hold was his...
...Party leaders knew the blocker's identity but didn't have to tell anyone, even the sponsors of the bill...
...He promptly dropped his objection and the bill was finally passed by the full Senate on a voice vote...
...But the bill still faced obstacles in the House as 52 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2006 JOHN H. FUND that body took up the task of reconciling the Senate and House versions...
...But no sooner was that hold released than word came that another Democratic senator had suddenly placed a hold on the bill...
...Senators know Stevens well enough not to challenge his bullying ways...
...That means opponents of pork-barrel spending will actually have to defend their programs rather than continuing to hide behind legislative legalese and secrecy...
...But at least this time the public can be armed with the knowledge of who is getting the pork and in what amounts...
...Since Washington currently collects all the information needed to create a comprehensive database on spending, there is no valid reason for the reduced focus of the Blunt and Davis bill," said Rep...
...Last August, after the House passed a version of the Coburn-Obama bill, an anonymous senator put a hold on the idea, using the Senate tradition that allows any member to secretly block consideration of a bill, effectively killing it...
...Within days, some 97 senators had been forced to deny they were the hidden obstructionist...
...It's not that the public hasn't tried to be heard...
...This "transparency" law will allow the public to serve as outside auditors of pork by doing Google-like searches of the $1 trillion in federal grants, earmarks, contracts, and loans that are disbursed annually...
...Several senators told me theybelieve that Stevens's hold had a lot to do with his anger over Coburn's attempt See They Spend to stop "The Bridge to Nowhere," a $230 million federally funded span that is proposed to run from Ketchikan, Alaska, with a population of less than 15,000, to Gravina Island, with a population of only 50 people...
...When a group of bloggers, led by Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds and NZ Bear, who had started a"Porkbusters" campaign learned about the secret hold, they issued a call for readers to contact their own senators and ask: "Are you the anonymous blocker...
...POLITICS ,JohH l / . Fund ~ FTER A YEAR OF HEADLINES about runaway federal spending and wasteful pork-barrel projects, fiscai conservatives finally won both an important and symbolic victory this fail when President Bush signed into law a bill creating a searchable online database of federal spending...
...Dan Morain, staff director of the Government Reform committee, told me his boss wanted openness but claimed that grants and contracts "are very different beasts" and that senators "don't understand the complexity of merging the two in one database.., they're apples and oranges" Senator Coburn responded that he's heard every excuse for secrecy, but "this is a new one" After a little more pressure from the "Forkbusters" bloggers, Rep...
...O THER MEMBERS BELIEVE that Davis, who represents many federal contractors in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.--"Beltway Bandits"--was unenthusiastic about transparency...
...NOVEMBER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 53...
...If Republicans suffer big losses in this fall's election, it will be in part because their leaders allowed spending as usual to continue, thus convincing many of their base voters to stay home in frustration...
...I t is astonishing that a simple bill opening up federal grants and contracts to sunshine would have such difficulty getting through a GOP Congress...
...Davis relented and the final legislation stipulated that the new website would also include contracts...
...Just last August he stripped a local project away from Sen...
...Within days, Sen...
Vol. 39 • November 2006 • No. 9
