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  • The Week on the Hill

Going on a pork-free diet may not be as easy as it sounds. This week, congressional Democrats got considerable publicity by declaring that the continuing resolution they'll write in January to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year will contain no earmarks. But figuring out how to do that could give the new chief appropriators heartburn.

The incoming chairmen of the Appropriations committees, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., announced on December 11 that they intend to quickly dispose of the nine fiscal 2007 appropriations bills that the GOP left unfinished by passing a CR making "minor adjustments" to the funding levels in the measures that the Republicans wrote -- and axing all the earmarked projects. Although the announcement dovetails nicely with the new Democratic majority's oft-heard pledge to make government more open and honest, the details could be vexing.

Obey and Byrd declined to discuss how they'll handle individual bills and projects. The ruling party -- its leaders and appropriators -- usually get the largest number of earmarks, and Republicans wrote the spending bills. But killing all of those GOP earmarks could leave unfunded some programs or priorities that the two Democratic chairmen actually consider essential.

Not only that, some of the annual appropriations bills -- particularly the Energy and Water, Military Construction, and Foreign Operations measures -- traditionally are heavily laden with hundreds, even thousands, of earmarks. Removing all of them in one fell swoop would leave some gaping holes. The House version of this year's Interior spending bill, for example, contains $270 million in earmarks for projects under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency alone, according to the Congressional Research Service.

"You've got this problem in several bills," said Scott Lilly, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and a former Democratic staff director of the House Appropriations Committee under Obey. Lilly noted that several of the spending bills include long, long lists of projects to be funded. "It's just always been done that way," he said.

Programs currently heavy with earmarks can be funded without pork, said Steve Ellis, vice president for programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group. For instance, funding for the Army Corps of Engineers -- usually a pork bonanza -- can be provided by geographic area, rather than by specific project, he said. "You don't have to do it by earmarks," Ellis said. "There's going to be some discretion given" to executive branch agencies to divvy up money.

In a December 12 interview with National Journal, Obey said that Democrats must change the earmarking system in light of numerous reported abuses. "The best way to get people's attention that there needs to be serious reform is to say that there won't be any earmarks," he said. "We have to build in protection for when some idiot goes too far and fouls the nest. The problem is not earmarking. The problem is the abuse of earmarking."

The veteran Byrd has been accused of being one of the biggest abusers by grabbing as much pork as he can for West Virginia. But Obey said that Byrd is misunderstood. "He has a strong track record of objecting to lobby-driven earmarks," Obey said.

Ironically, the Democrats are winning kudos from some conservative Republicans who have long fought their own party leaders on earmarking. "If Chairmen Obey and Byrd are serious about this, then they deserve some praise," Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a leading earmark critic, said in a statement. "If they're serious, they've managed to do something that Republican spenders have had a hard time doing lately: say 'no.' "

Still, once members realize that many of their pet projects aren't going to get funded this year, there will be some griping on both sides of the aisle. "I think the pain is going to be pretty broadly distributed, and people are going to be pretty unhappy about it," Lilly said.

Members may even lobby Obey and Byrd for exemptions. But if the Ashland, Wis., school district is not going to receive the $250,000 it was slated to receive for an after-school program, the chances are that Obey is not going to be too sympathetic.