Bush Aims to Cut Earmarks, but Not Yet

President Bush, shown greeting Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) just before his State of the Union address, made eliminating lawmakers' pet projects, or earmarks, the center of the domestic agenda he laid out in the speech. The executive order cracking down on earmarks, however, would not go into force until fiscal 2009. (By Rich Lipski -- The Washington Post)
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"Congress could cut earmarks in half if Republicans in Congress stopped asking for earmarks," Coburn said. "The party of limited government and personal responsibility should not have to look to the president to save it from itself."

But perhaps the most serious questions surrounded whether the effort would work -- or whether it should work -- even if Bush's successor picks up the cause. Language in an earmark created the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, whose influential report on war policy has become a critical part of the Iraq debate. Earmarks created international programs to eliminate child labor. They fund the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and are responsible for funding most federal breast cancer research.

"The Constitution grants to the Congress the power over the purse," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.). "Congress, elected by the people of the individual states and congressional districts, is in a much better position to know if there are specific needs for federal assistance in their states than unelected bureaucrats in Washington."

House and Senate appropriations committee aides said avoiding Bush's executive order will be as simple as copying earmark instructions from bill reports and pasting them into the bills.

That could actually limit the discretion of federal agencies by giving earmarks the force of law. For instance, if a bill report allocates $1 million to repair a bridge in Maryland and a local government decides to demolish the bridge, the Department of Transportation can shift those funds elsewhere. But if that funding has the force of law, the local authority gets the money, bridge or no bridge.

If lawmakers intend to send money to Montgomery County and mistakenly write Monterey County, the mistake now can be remedied with a phone call. If it is law, Monterey, Calif., might be in luck.

Details in bill reports come not only from lawmakers but from the administration itself, said David Alberswerth, an Interior Department official in the Clinton administration who is now with the Wilderness Society. Without them, bureaucracies could be either adrift or dangerously at liberty.

"If Bush actually does this," he said, "the agencies that requested language either won't know what to do, or they'll have complete discretion with no guidance at all."