Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) are being allowed an amendment to the Food Safety bill that would make it a requirement that any bill with an earmark get 60 votes. Maybe because this is a change in the rules, the amendment will need the support of two-thirds of the Senate (67 votes) in order to pass. There are several Republicans who don’t support this change in the rules, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Thad Cochran of Mississippi. But there are supporters in the Democratic Caucus, including Russ Feingold, Evan Bayh, and Mark Udall of Colorado. It’s really a pretty mild proposal.
When was the last time a major spending bill passed without having to face a cloture vote? It already takes 60 votes to pass all but the least controversial bills in the Senate, so this reform wouldn’t appear to change much. It would do little more than remove the formality of an objecting senator having to refuse his or her consent to proceed to a vote on a bill. Instead, they’d have to invoke a ‘point of order’ objection.
Here is how they are defining ‘earmarks.’
“A provision or report language included primarily at the request of a Senator or Member of the House of Representatives providing, authorizing, or recommending a specific amount of discretionary budget authority, credit authority, or other spending authority for a contract, loan, loan guarantee, grant, loan authority, or other expenditure with or to an entity, or targeted to a specific State, locality or Congressional district, other than through a statutory or administrative formula-driven or competitive award process.”
It has been widely noted that spending earmarks make up a tiny percentage of the overall budget and that Congress probably shouldn’t give up their right to direct federal spending to specific projects. However, there are tax earmarks, too, and they make up a larger part of the budget.
Lawmakers directed $15.9 billion in spending earmarks to their home states in 2010, but the co-chairmen of President Obama’s fiscal commission estimate there are $1.1 trillion worth of annual earmarks in tax legislation.
It’s unclear to me how this amendment would interact with the Budget Act of 1974. In particular, I don’t know how it would affect the use of the budget reconciliation process, which allows the Senate to pass spending bills that are not subject to the filibuster.
I can’t say that I would support this amendment without knowing its potential impact on the budget, but superficially it doesn’t seem to be a big deal. If it just got John McCain to STFU about earmarks, it might be worth it.
