White House will leave omnibus earmarks untouched

Although President Bush will lay out a plan in his final State of the Union address to aggressively tackle earmarks in the future, the spending items in the omnibus bill that Congress recently passed would not be touched, the White House said Monday.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters that Bush would take “unprecedented steps” to reduce the number of earmarks and reform the system that allows members of Congress to add the spending items to appropriations bills in the dark of night.

{mosads}“The president will say that if these spending items are worthy, Congress should debate them in the open and hold a public vote,” Perino said.

On Tuesday, Bush will announce an executive order “directing agencies to ignore any future earmarks included in report language, but not in the legislation, which is traditionally how they end up on the books,” Perino added.

In addition, the president is expected to threaten in his address Monday to veto any appropriations bill this year that does not cut the number of earmarks in half.

Following the White House announcement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) chided Republicans for inconsistency in their approach to earmarks. She noted that House Republicans had considered a yearlong moratorium on their earmarks, but over the weekend they dropped that idea and settled on requesting a bipartisan study of ways to reduce “pork-barrel spending.”

“I think Republicans have pulled their punch on earmarks,” Pelosi said in a pre-State of the Union conference call with reporters. “It looked like a very lukewarm approach. They want to beat a loud drum, but when it comes down to it, they want their earmarks.”

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) lauded the White House but argued that Congress should go further.

“The earmark process has become a symbol of a broken Washington,” Boehner said. “House Republicans applaud the President’s pledge to veto bills that do not significantly slash earmarks and provide appropriate transparency in spending.”

The GOP leader said Congress should adopt “an immediate moratorium on all earmarks and establishing a panel to determine ways to end wasteful pork-barrel spending.

“It’s our sincere hope that Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic Majority will join us by the end of this week in supporting these urgently needed reforms so Congress can begin restoring trust between the American people and their elected leaders,” Boehner added.

A fact sheet provided by the White House said these actions “will effectively end the common practice of concealing earmarks in so-called report language instead of placing them in the actual text of the bill.”

“This means earmarks will be subject to votes, which will better expose them to the light of day and help constrain excessive and unjustified spending,” the fact sheet said.

However, the reforms will not apply to the massive omnibus spending bill Congress passed at the end of last year. Bush had threatened that the Office of Management and Budget would look into ways to reduce those earmarks as well.

“The president decided that he needed to give the Congress a very clear indication of what he was going to do,” Perino stated.