Senators May Be Forced to Vote on Earmarks

One of the things driving Federal expenditures to record highs are "earmarks", or pork projects that are slipped into spending bills by the hundreds. Most of the time these things just appear in the bills without any discussion or votes. Millions and billions of federal tax dollars are spent on these things, which are often designed to benefit the Senator in his home state more than the people of America. Bob Novak reports that two Senators, McCain and Coburn, may require roll call votes before earmarks are allowed in spending bills:

Sens. John McCain and Tom Coburn may force their colleagues to make an up-or-down public decision on proposals such as tucking $2 million for a public park in San Francisco into the nation's massive military spending bill. Last Dec. 20, this bit of pork was passed by Congress without debate and without a vote in the final version of the Defense Appropriations Act.

McCain and Coburn last Wednesday proposed a revolutionary change in the way Congress has done more and more of its business over the past two decades. They announced their intention to "challenge" future earmarks as a violation of Senate rules. That would have meant a roll call vote on each of the 15,268 special spending items in 2005 (nearly a four-fold increase over the previous decade) that individual members quietly slipped into massive bills in the dead of night.

McCain, a lonely voice in the Senate battling the bipartisan taste for pork, was joined last year by newly elected Dr. Tom Coburn, the flinty obstetrician from Muskogee, Okla. Even their combined voices probably would not have been heard were it not for the Jack Abramoff lobbyist scandal. Now, the demand for pork by politicians that consumed $27 billion last year could be endangered.

Senators love their pork, and this will be an uphill fight at best.