By Robert Novak
May 1, 2006
WASHINGTON — Though obscured by the complexities of legislation,
reformers trying to rein in congressional spending excesses scored signal
victories in the House and Senate in the same hour late Thursday afternoon.
In the process, chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations
committees suffered humiliating defeats. In the House, Chairman Jerry Lewis
bowed to Republican leaders to reform runaway earmark spending. In the
Senate, Chairman Thad Cochran lost an effort to stop Sen. Tom Coburn’s
crusade against earmarks.
Terrified by possible loss of their majorities in November,
Republicans in Congress may have turned a corner in casting off the tyranny
of the appropriators over the spending process. House Speaker J. Dennis
Hastert exerted his will, and newly installed Majority Leader John Boehner
registered his first triumph. In scoring his first floor victory over an
earmark, Coburn showed he is more than a nuisance freshman senator and,
allied with Sen. John McCain, a force to be reckoned with.
The House recessed in disarray three weeks ago when Lewis
forced the leadership to cancel consideration of the budget resolution
because he opposed restrictions on earmarking by the appropriators. When
I disclosed this in a column, a defiant Lewis claimed the changes “would
have been a boon for Democrats.”
But when Lewis and the appropriators returned to Washington
last week, they encountered an unfriendly climate. Hastert and Boehner
did not blink. A clever career legislator, Lewis last Tuesday said he would
accept earmark reforms if applied to all legislation, not just appropriations,
when the lobbyist reform bill reached the floor Thursday. As Lewis knew,
there was no way to make those changes in 48 hours.
Lewis’s aim was to get the leadership to take the legislation
off the floor rather than lose the vote on the rule permitting debate.
But Hastert was not yielding this time, as he informed an emergency closed-door
conference of all House Republicans at noon Thursday. Rep. Mike Pence,
head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, told hushed colleagues
that they must make a “bold statement” on reform or face disaster
in November.
The bill looked dead that afternoon when the appropriators
asked to confer with the leadership. Near the end of the meeting, the committee’s
most junior member — Rep. Rodney Alexander of Louisiana — told how he
had crossed the aisle to become a Republican in 2004. He said he would
remain a Republican even if the party lost its majority this year, but
declared the earmark reforms are essential.
Facing opposition on his own committee, Lewis capitulated.
Only one appropriator voted against the rule as it passed, 216 to 207.
Lewis and the appropriators tried to plant the story that this was a compromise,
but it was not. The requirements that authors of earmarks be publicly identified
and that any member of Congress be permitted to propose an earmark’s removal
are non-negotiable.
In the Senate, McCain’s long crusade against earmarks
has a new fighter in Coburn (who McCain says has supplanted him as the
Senate’s Miss Congeniality). On Wednesday, Coburn offered an amendment
to eliminate 19 earmarks from the emergency appropriations bill and came
just shy of defeating a $700 million railroad relocation in Mississippi.
On Thursday, Coburn proposed to eliminate $15 million
for “seafood promotion strategy.” McCain told the Senate: “Let
me save the American taxpayers $125 million right now by telling all Americans
now to eat seafood. Eat seafood. It is good for you.” When Coburn
rejected Cochran’s call for a voice vote, the normally calm Appropriations
chairman in a fury made a non-debatable tabling motion to kill Coburn’s
proposal. The astounding outcome was a 51 to 44 bipartisan victory for
Coburn and McCain, following years of failure in such initiatives.
After the vote, Coburn could be seen on the floor animatedly
lecturing a silent Cochran. It can be guessed he was promising to hold
the Senate’s feet to the fire on one earmark after another. Coburn this
coming week will propose removing from the bill $500 million to be paid
Northrop Grumman for lost income caused by Hurricane Katrina. The outcome
will indicate whether last Thursday’s events on Capitol Hill truly point
to new congressional concern about using taxpayer money.
Robert Novak is a television personality and columnist.
Novak is also editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report available through
a free
offer from Human Events Online.
Copyright 2006 Townhall.com
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