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Restore Earmark Spending To Pre-1994 Levels |
"Barack Obama is committed to returning earmarks to less than $7.8 billion a year, the level they were at before 1994."
-- Obama's "The Change We Need In Washington"
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MARCH 01, 2009
Earmark Promise Won't Apply To 2009 Budget
During an appearance on ABC's "This Week", Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said the president's promise to reduce earmark spending would not apply to the 2009 omnibus, which still has yet to pass. "This is last year's business," said Orszag. "We want to just move on. Let's get this bill done, get it into law and move forward." Orszag did promise a reduction of earmarks in the 2010 budget, a summary of which was released last week. "We want to make sure that earmarks are reduced and they're also transparent," he said. "We're going to work with the Congress on a set of reforms to achieve those." When pressed by host George Stephanopoulos -- "But he signs this bill this year?" -- Orszag again dismissed this year's budget. "This is last year's business," he said. "We just need to move on." |
By LUCAS GRINDLEY
Obama said in his prime-time press conference Feb. 9 that the stimulus contained zero earmarks. But it depends on your definition of earmark -- the GOP says the stimulus is filled with them.
The president conceded the bill isn't perfect but insisted that "when they start characterizing this as pork without acknowledging that there are no earmarks in this package -- something, again, that was pretty rare over the last eight years -- then you get a feeling that maybe we're playing politics instead of actually trying to solve problems for the American people."
On its Web site, the Office of Management and Budget maintains a searchable earmark database. But don't expect to find any stimulus projects there. OMB spokesman Tom Gavin said via e-mail that "it is the administration’s view that there are no earmarks in the Recovery Act. So there won’t be anything new on the earmark Web site."
Lawmakers might have been wary of porky persecution while drafting the bill. Section 1604 restricts how state and local governments can use stimulus dollars, barring them from spending the money on "any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool."
Still, the Republican National Committee points to reporting by the Washington Post and others that declares parts of the bill to be "pork." Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., called one $2 billion program the "largest earmark in American history" before its price tag was reduced to $1 billion.
If the public sides with Republicans' version of the story, Obama might never be able to fulfill his campaign promise of reducing earmark costs to pre-1994 levels since the $787 billion stimulus package, which the CBO estimates includes nearly $312 billion in discretionary spending, potentially includes enough GOP-defined earmarks to eclipse his goal several times over.
