Is there some good in congressional earmark secrecy?

by Frank James

House Republican Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) has never made a legislative spending request, or earmark, in his 16 years in Congress.

That gives him something of the high ground in the fight over earmarks in Congress in which Democrats and Republicans are each trying to prove their side is holier than the other on the issue.

During a meeting with reporters today, Boehner was asked why, as leader of the House Republicans, he just didn't request that his fellow Republican members disclose all their earmark requests.

He deflected the question by saying that the Democrat who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey of Wisconsin, should make the 32,000 or so earmark requests public since Obey has them in his possession.

He was pressed a bit on the issue and kept deflecting. Then he said something which often gets overlooked in the debate over earmarks.

One reason some members are skittish about publicizing their earmark requests is because they don't make all the requests constiutents ask them to. Even in the eyes of some members of Congress, sometimes projects in their home districts just don't rate the expenditure of taxpayer money. Hard to believe, I know, but apparently true.

If earmark requests aren't disclosed, as is presently the case, that allows a member to tell a constituent, "Hey, I fought for your project but lost. Sorry," even when he or she didn't.

Publicly disclosing all earmark requests will blow the cover members have enjoyed until now. Arguably, if all earmarks are made public, some lawmakers will submit requests on dubious projects just to prove keep constituents happy.

The downside of that is such requests could later be used a lawmaker seeking re-election as examples of wasteful spending.

The question is, are there enough of these worthless projects for which lawmakers are comfortable not making requests because they know that information is unlikely to get back to constituents to offset all those dubious bridge-to-nowhere projects that do get funded because of earmark secrecy?

Here's Boehner's exchange with reporters:

QUESTION: Mr. Boehner, on transparency and accountability, in the age of the Internet -- and I know you don't take personal earmarks or requests...

BOEHNER: I've never requested an earmark.

QUESTION: But there are a lot of different kinds of earmarks. But we'll get into that some other time.

But why not ask all your members to proactively list all of their earmark requests on their Web sites?

BOEHNER: Mr. Obey has all of the earmark requests. And if Mr. Obey wants to disclose all of the earmarks, if the Democrat leadership wants to disclose all of the earmarks, they have all of the earmarks. Why don't they just disclose them?

QUESTION: You're encouraging him to do that?

BOEHNER: Rahm Emanuel is trying to put lipstick on a pig, after they got their hands caught in the cookie jar last week. And so he started this effort to try to force members individually.

And it was interesting that he didn't ask any of his leaders to disclose their earmarks.

BOEHNER: I don't have any, so I don't have an issue here.

But they have all the earmarks. All 32,000 requests Mr. Obey has, why don't they just disclose them?

QUESTION: But why don't you lead by example and send a Dear Colleague to your own members saying, "Look, the rules are here..."

BOEHNER: I'm not the chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

QUESTION: But you're the leader of the party.

BOEHNER: He has all of the earmarks. He ought to disclose them.

QUESTION: But do you think that a member -- yes or no, should members be doing that?

BOEHNER: I don't do earmarks, so I don't know what problems exist.

It's probably more of a problem of requests that were not made for members back in their districts. You know, apparently a lot of these members get a lot of requests for all kinds of projects in their districts. And they submit some of them, and apparently some of them they don't submit. And I think the bigger problem is the ones that they don't submit on behalf of their constituents.

QUESTION: Meaning they might get in trouble with that crowd asking them to request something and they haven't followed through on it?

BOEHNER: Or maybe they didn't think it was worthy.