House Democrats seek to limit earmarks to show commitment to ethics

Seeking to reclaim the reform mantle amid a series of scandals, House Democratic leaders are advocating a move that would shake up the multibillion-dollar practice of awarding no-bid contracts known as congressional earmarks.

Democrats are pushing for a new rule that would most likely forbid earmarked expenditures to private, for-profit contractors for at least one year. Such businesses reap billions annually in federal grants directed their way by individual lawmakers, particularly from the Pentagon's budget.

House leaders emerged from a meeting Tuesday in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ready to push earmark reform as one way to rebut charges that they have been soft on ethics issues.

A string of recent scandals -- including the admonition of Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) for accepting corporate-financed trips and the resignation of Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) amid allegations of sexual harassment -- have drowned out any political goodwill from actions Democrats took three years ago upon claiming the majority, including more disclosure of lobbyist activity and banning gifts from lobbyists.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department continues to investigate the earmark success of lobbying firms linked to several House Democrats. Those lawmakers have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the firms' clients.

"We have made some real progress. The negative noise out there is at almost a deafening level," House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday. "And it drowns out, too often, the facts."

According to senior aides familiar with the internal discussions, Pelosi's leadership team has considered calling for a one-year moratorium on all earmarks, discussions that were first reported this week by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.

But the more likely decision, aides said, would be to ask rank-and-file lawmakers to accept a one-year ban on earmarks distributed to for-profit companies, the type of no-bid contracts that have been at the center of most corruption allegations. While the earmark ban would be temporary, key leaders hope it would become permanent in the years ahead.

Under this plan, lawmakers could still steer six- and seven-figure grants to local nonprofits and municipalities, as President Obama and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel did when they served in Congress.

Democrats have reduced the amount of earmarks since 2007, but they still totaled almost $16 billion for the 12 annual spending bills that funded the federal government for this year, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, an independent watchdog group. These expenditures represent a sliver of the more than $1 trillion in discretionary spending Congress doles out each year, but critics say earmarks skew the spending process to favor contractors who hire the right lobbying firms and make donations to lawmakers on the appropriations committees.

The House ethics committee, in an investigation of five Democrats and two Republicans on the subcommittee that funds the Pentagon, found that the seven lawmakers steered more than $245 million worth of earmarks to clients of a single firm and collected more than $840,000 in political contributions from the firm's lobbyists and its clients in little more than two years. Most of those clients were for-profit contractors, several of whom told congressional investigators that they thought their donations made it possible for them to win support for their projects.

The ethics panel, however, found no "direct or indirect link" in the earmarks-for-contributions allegations, saying the lawmakers made their decisions independently of the donations. A decision by Democratic leaders to forbid such earmarks to private contractors would be a political blow to the ethics findings last month.

House Republicans, who dramatically inflated the use of earmarks during their 12 years as the chamber's majority party, have pushed for a complete moratorium on the practice. They questioned the sincerity of the effort and whether it would go far enough to root out what they consider the worst practices.

"It's good to see they might -- might -- be thinking about doing something to stop their out-of-control spending spree, which is scaring the hell out of the American people," Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio), said in a statement.

Key senators in both parties showed little interest in yielding the power of the purse to federal agencies, leaving the possibility that one chamber could ban the practice while the other continues earmarking as usual.

"The Constitution requires us to do our job. Taxation without representation was a big rallying cry. Well, spending without representation would be a problem, too," said Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.