Cochran-Coburn earmark duel ends in draw

The Senate’s biggest winner of earmarks fought the harshest critic of parochial spending projects to a draw during weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations, according to internal GOP documents obtained by The Hill.

Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.), the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee, repeatedly attempted to dilute tough restrictions put forward by Sen. Tom Coburn, the firebrand Republican conservative from Oklahoma.

{mosads}The two battled as members of a special task force on earmarks that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) convened at the beginning of the year.

The task force announced its recommendations in March and the Senate Republican Conference has yet to act on them. Nevertheless, they are expected to form the basis of any collective action Senate Republicans take on earmark reform before the election.

Senate Republican aides said McConnell could put the task force’s recommendations to the conference after the August recess.

Senate proponents of earmark reform say one reason for the lack of progress is appropriators and fiscal conservatives remain divided over the issue of reform, a split symbolized by the differences between Cochran and Coburn.

Copies of the task force’s working papers show that Cochran worked methodically to preserve Congress’s power of the purse and soften the tone of the group’s report.

They also show that Coburn, Oklahoma’s junior senator, repeatedly tried to strengthen limits on earmarking power, only to be rebuffed by his colleagues.

Cochran pushed changes in the report that expanded proposed reforms to include authorizing and tax-writing committees. By doing so, he gave himself allies on the Finance Committee and other panels in future debates over limiting the power of lawmakers who draft the final versions of legislation.

Coburn’s biggest victory was to persuade his colleagues to call for closing loopholes that allow appropriators to circumvent restrictions on earmarks by placing them into reports that accompany spending bills.

But Coburn lost to Cochran in a debate over banning earmarks inserted into legislation at the final moment, a practice known as “air-dropping.” Cochran also beat back an effort to require that earmarks be offered as amendments to bills, which would have limited severely the ability of appropriators to add local spending projects to bills.

McConnell, a longtime member of the Appropriations Committee, convened the task force to explore earmark reform in response to growing pressure from fiscal conservatives such as Coburn and Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.), chairman of the Senate Republican Steering Committee.

In addition to Coburn and Cochran, the task force included Sens. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

{mospagebreak}Proponents of earmark reform say that McConnell used the task force to quell conservative colleagues’ anger over earmarks. Now that Republicans have shifted their focus to gas prices and away from earmark reform, opponents of earmarks in the GOP conference say that McConnell has shown little desire to advance the recommendations of the task force.

“I’m very disappointed there’s been no follow-through there,” said DeMint. “I’m going to do everything I can to slow-walk any appropriations bills that have earmarks, because the party has not developed a consensus.”

DeMint said he was willing to set aside guerrilla tactics on earmark reform in the hope that Republicans could reach consensus on the issue and act. But he has been disappointed.

{mosads}“I was willing to go along with the very modest proposal if we did it together, but the fact that we can’t even get that done is very frustrating,” he said.

Spokesmen for Coburn and Cochran declined to comment on the documents, which provide a rare view of member-to-member debates over a sensitive political issue. Senate staff were banned from task force meetings.

An aide to Lugar, who headed the task force, warned that it is not clear from the working papers whether comments attributed to Cochran and Coburn on working drafts were written by the lawmakers themselves or attributed to them by staff.

“Dr. Coburn would rather have the final document speak for itself,” said spokesman John Hart, in reference to the final report produced by the task force. That final report, however, fell short of what Coburn wanted, according to edited draft documents that led up to it.

In an edit to a task force working paper, Coburn wrote: “The Republican Conference should establish a policy opposing all airdropped earmarks,” referring to projects added to bills during conference between the House and Senate.

Cochran parried with his own suggestion: “The Republican Caucus should establish a policy of minimizing the inclusion of new earmarks in conference. …”

Cochran prevailed, and the task force declined to prohibit air-dropped projects. But Coburn won a significant victory by spurring the task force to require that earmarks added late in negotiations be included in bill text so that they could be eliminated by using procedural objections.

This recommendation would close a loophole in the 2007 ethics and lobbying reform bill that imposed stricter rules for earmarks in bill text than for earmarks in reports accompanying bills.

“In order to truly protect against the insertion of ALL airdropped earmarks, the Senate must first place all earmarks in bill text,” Coburn wrote.

Cochran also defeated a proposal to require that lawmakers report on the Internet all earmarks they request. He convinced the task force instead to require senators to report only earmarks included in legislation at their request.

Cochran repeatedly worked to include the Finance Committee in reforms that critics had aimed primarily at the Appropriations panel.

When the task force suggested in a draft that “federal spending should not be distributed to specific locations or projects solely on the basis of influence and privilege,” Cochran insisted that “tax benefits” should have to conform to the same standard.

Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman, said his boss supported the task force recommendations and would bring them before the GOP conference.

“McConnell has assigned the task force, he worked with the task force, he presented their findings and he supports them,” said Stewart. “He will meet with his conference about it and let the conference review it.”