Wave Maker

Oh boy, this is a real shocker:

Almost half of the special-interest ''pork" projects targeted in the Senate's highly touted lobbying-reform bill could still be slipped quietly into spending bills without public scrutiny, because of a glaring loophole in the bill's language...

...[B]ecause the lobbying bill defines earmarks as only non-federal projects, at least 5,283 of the 12,852 earmarks in the 2006 spending bills alone would have been exempt from the rules. This is because the earmarks were funded through federal agencies...

Why do we have to find this out from a "watchdog group" several days after the chest-thumping Senators crowed about their haivng taken the "Not for Sale" sign off the Capitol?

Lest there be any doubt what we're up against:

...The derided earmark to direct federal money to support a mall with a Hooters restaurant in Louisiana would not be considered an earmark subject to disclosure rules in the new bill. The Hooters provision was discovered after a congressman quietly inserted it into the 2003 energy bill, and it was later removed. But it was later slipped into a tax bill and became law anyway...

What is federal money doing in a mall project at all?!? I don't care if there's a Hooters or a Roy Rogers -- malls are quintessentially capitalist endeavors. If they need federal money to work, they're not viable and shouldn't be built!

And how is this defended?

...Supporters of the lobbying reform measure acknowledge that the bill is imperfect, but said they needed to find a compromise that would gain majority support...

...The House members want to identify the sponsor of all earmarks, and allow any earmark to be challenged on the House floor. A majority vote would remove an earmark from a spending bill.

But senior members of the House Appropriations Committee are fiercely resisting their efforts, said Representative Jeff Flake, a leading critic of earmarks. ''It's difficult. You're taking away people's power," said Flake, an Arizona Republican. ''The power to reward your constituents, your friends, and your donors is pretty darn strong."

This infuriates me. If majority support is elusive because members do not want their earmarks to face open scrutiny -- that they should be implemented without being held up to the democratic process -- then we've fallen further than any of us could have feared.

I've suggested to others more strident than I that "compromise" was an essential element in maintaining a governing majority. But there are some things that you just can't compromise on. I see no legitimate justification for a system that permits elected members of Congress to spend our money in secret. If they want to go home and crow about "bringing home the bacon," they've got to let the rest of us watch them cook it.