Good News/Bad News on Earmark Reform

CAGW* | November 7, 2007

CCAGW this month applauded Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) for successfully removing a $1 million earmark for the Bethel Performing Arts Center Museum in New York. Sponsored by the state’s Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the earmark would have included funding for a tribute to the 1969 Woodstock Festival, earning it widespread ridicule in a nationally televised Republican presidential debate. “Taxpayers are dancing in the streets and saying ‘yippee’ over the defeat of this hippie earmark,” quipped CCAGW President Tom Schatz. Read more about the defeat of this special-interest earmark. http://www.cagw.org/site/R?i=BfHxQp-s0eLNkk5gdZIGSw

On the other side of the Capitol, CCAGW slammed Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and his colleagues for purposefully putting up barriers to earmark accountability and transparency. According to Congressional Quarterly Weekly, Rep. Murtha told a reporter complaining about the difficulty of unearthing earmark information in appropriations bills, “So you have to work. Tough [expletive]!” New House rules require public disclosure of an earmark’s sponsor, recipient, amount, and justification, but earmark lists provided by the House Appropriations Subcommittees have been unsearchable and difficult to read. “Rep. Murtha’s vulgar comments, along with the actions of his party, prove that the new majority is hostile to real reform,” said CCAGW President Tom Schatz. Read more about efforts to obstruct earmark reform. http://www.cagw.org/site/R?i=_CN0iR90MPfCnifRZj3b3Q

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