Dear Senator:

By invoking cloture yesterday on S. 2349, the Lobbying Reform bill, the Senate prematurely stifled debate on earmarking reform, a critical ingredient of any comprehensive reform of the Washington pay-to-play political culture. While S. 2349 includes some transparency provisions regarding earmarks such as what they are for and who requested them, there are important taxpayer protections that Congress closed the door on by stopping debate.

This bill represents probably the best opportunity to comprehensively deal with the problems of earmarking and make the appropriations process more transparent. Cloture prevented important provisions from S. 2265, the Pork Barrel Reduction Act, to be offered as amendments. These provisions include mechanisms to move earmarks out of the report weeds and into actual legislation; tools (such as points of order) to remove earmarks from legislation (S. 2349 only targets earmarks added in conference committee); and requirements that legislation be available for 48 hours before a vote (S. 2349 calls for 24 hours).

We believe there are other earmarking issues that these bills should address. All requests for earmarks – successful or not – should be made public on appropriations committee web sites. The definition of earmark should not be limited to non-federal entities, because to do so would ignore the thousands of earmark in the Department of Defense appropriations bill or for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for example.

Taxpayers deserve more than a limited debate over lobby reform and earmarks. The explosion of earmarks over the last decade and the scandals surrounding the actions of Duke Cunningham and Jack Abramoff have revealed a problem that is deep-rooted and persistent. Congress owes the public a full and open debate on these issues and the Senate’s undivided attention. Taxpayers for Common Sense strongly urges Congress to tackle all of these issues in a comprehensive reform package. If you would like to discuss this further please contact Steve Ellis, Vice President of Programs at 202-546-8500 ext. 126 or steve@taxpayer.net.

Sincerely,

Jill Lancelot
President/Co-Founder

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