Earmark Overload
WASHINGTON–So much for a new era of fiscal discipline in Congress.
Lawmakers filed so many earmark requests to fund home-state pet projects last week that they bogged down the House Appropriations Committee’s Web site. This despite a demand from President George W. Bush to slash earmarks in half, a call from House Republicans for a one-year moratorium on earmarks (a proposal endorsed by all three presidential contenders) and mounting public scrutiny of what critics call “pork barrel spending.”
Indeed, even as the Senate debated (and rejected) the one year moratorium on the projects before their Spring recess, lawmakers were putting the finishing touches on their earmark wish lists in time for this week’s deadline.
Then came the overload, first reported by Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.
Here’s the full account from Roll Call:
In a sure sign that earmarks remain as popular as ever, an overload of pork requests clogged the House Appropriations Committee’s Web site Wednesday, forcing an extension to the request deadline to next week.
The committee extended its deadline for earmark requests until 11:59 p.m. on March 24 after a “massive influx of requests” caused “unavoidable access and processing delays,” wrote Rob Nabors, staff director for the committee, in a memo to Member offices.
The committee had set March 19 as the deadline for submitting requests, and more than 90 percent of Members are expected to submit them despite calls for a moratorium from House Republican leaders, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and the three remaining major presidential candidates, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
So what else is new?