|
McCain, Feingold reunite to battle earmarks |
|
By Susan Crabtree
|
|
Posted: 01/07/09 04:41 PM [ET] |
Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) are renewing their longtime reform partnership to launch an aggressive attack on earmarks.
McCain, back to the daily Senate routine after his failed White House bid, joined Sens. Feingold, Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Wednesday to unveil a landmark bill they will try to add as an amendment to the economic stimulus legislation.
The measure is part of what appears to be a broad push for earmark reform in the 111th Congress. The chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations committees on Tuesday announced more transparency requirements for earmarks in fiscal 2010 appropriations bills, such as requiring members to post their pet project requests online and releasing earmarks tables at the subcommittee level.
“I don’t have to tell anybody that our economy is in shambles … and American families are suffering very badly right now,” McCain said. “It’s important now, more than ever, that Congress restores fiscal discipline to Washington and gets our financial house in order.”
McCain said he was encouraged that President-elect Obama had pledged to have an earmark-free economic stimulus bill and echoed one of his most aggressive pledges of the campaign: “Our goal is not transparency. Our goal is the elimination of earmarks.”
Asked how he felt to be back in his old stomping grounds after such a hard-fought White House run, McCain said only that he was happy to be back before moving on to the merits of the earmark bill. He spoke after Feingold, starting off softly and haltingly but ending with a few jokes and snarls.
Feingold, who is the lead co-sponsor of the bill, said it was no accident that opposition to earmarks and wasteful government spending was a theme of both presidential campaigns.
“Congress should recognize the widespread support of people across the political spectrum for reining in wasteful spending and enact[ing] the reforms necessary to ensure taxpayer dollars are well-spent.”
The measure aims to prevent unauthorized earmarks in appropriations bills by requiring all appropriations conference reports to be made electronically searchable 48 hours before the Senate considers them for a vote.
The bill also would establish a point of order against unauthorized earmarks. To overcome the point of order, supporters of the earmark would need to obtain a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate. Earmarked funding that is successfully stricken from the spending bill would be unavailable for other spending in that bill, thereby reducing the bill’s overall spending level.
In the past, the McCain-Feingold collaboration resulted in the 2002 campaign-finance law that placed more limits on political contributions and caused great consternation among conservatives.
On Wednesday, the pair joked that Feingold was the lead sponsor of the new earmark bill, and so this effort would be referred to as “Feingold-McCain.”
Feingold recalled the last “Saturday Night Live” skit during the presidential campaign, which featured McCain peddling household goods in between campaign pitches, à la QVC, including a McCain-Feingold jewelry line.
“So now it’s going to be Feingold-McCain,” Feingold said.
“But it’s still a wonderful bargain,” McCain deadpanned.
McCain also showed his contempt for some of the more outrageous projects his colleagues request. He ridiculed a $188,000 earmark for the Lobster Institute that included money for a “Lobstercam” and research for “lobster-dog biscuits.”
“Since [Tuesday] afternoon, my staff has been trying to find the Lobstercam, and the website is blank,” he snarled.
He heaped praise on McCaskill, the junior Democratic senator from Missouri, for her work fighting wasteful spending on the Armed Services Committee.
She returned the favor.
“I’m so respectful of John McCain,” she said. “I am tickled pink to be here on stage with him.”
|
