OMB to keep track of fiscal 2008 earmarks

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) stated Thursday that it will keep track of earmarks during the 2008 fiscal year appropriations process.

In a memo to all executive branch agency heads, OMB Director Rob Portman asked all agencies to report to OMB the number and dollar value of earmarks within seven days after an appropriations bill is either reported by the House or Senate appropriations committees or passed on the House or Senate floor.

{mosads}“We are going to be more aggressive on earmarks going into the appropriations cycle,” said Portman at a meeting with reporters. “The notion is not that every earmark is bad or there shouldn’t be any earmarks. The notion is that this has gotten out of control.”

A spokesman for Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) said that OMB should have no problem in finding earmarks, thanks to new transparency requirements.

“They should have a very easy time in identifying those earmarks,” said spokesman Tom Gavin. “All of that information will made be available and in a very upfront fashion.”

According to the OMB memo, the agency “need[s] to rapidly identify earmarks in each of these bills as they move through the legislative process” to help meet President Bush’s goal of cutting earmarks in half.

“It certainly sounds like they are serious about their pledge about cutting earmarks in half,” said Steve Ellis, vice president for Taxpayers for Common Sense, which calls for fewer earmarks and more transparency generally in the appropriations process.

For its part, the agency has already posted a public online database of Congress’s earmarks for the 2005 fiscal year, setting a baseline for the president’s cuts. But Democrats on Capitol Hill have complained that the database contains only legislative earmarks, not the White House’s own administrative earmarks.

According to the OMB memo, agencies should provide a PDF document of the relevant language — or a spreadsheet listing if no language is available — for each earmark, “which may be made available to the public.”

An OMB spokeswoman said the agency is committed to releasing the new earmarks as soon as it confirms their accuracy.