In the past, a congresscritter could team up with a group of other like-minded scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours types and wedge away all kinds of refrigerator cash to favored hometown projects. Which, fair enough, that’s pretty much what we pay them for but here’s the rub: They could do so anonymously.
The lack of transparency behind these so-called “earmarks” not only seemed rather anti-democratic on its face – we are paying their salaries, after all, and have a right to know what they’re doing on our time – but it was open to all kinds of absurd abuses.
All that’s changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born as the House of Representatives passed HR 1000 today by a wide margin (245-171). With new transparency rules in effect, the private pilfering of the public fisc – which, admittedly it never amounted to all that much, but a hundred million here, and a hundred million there and suddenl you’re talking real money – should quickly diminish.
It’s not perfect of course – we are talking about the federal government, after all – but it’s a useful first step. A step that Tennesse representative Howard Ford, Jr. seemed to go wobbly at, for a while today. Until one of his constituents noticed. In a rather public way:
I JUST GOT AN EMAIL claiming that Harold Ford, Jr. plans to vote against the earmark transparency rules change mentioned below. I just called his office and was told that he hasn’t made up his mind yet.
It seems like a no-brainer to me, and he certainly spoke in favor of transparency in the podcast interview we conducted a few months back.
UPDATE: Ed Frank emails: “CQ reporter Liriel Higa just repeated on C-Span that Harold Ford and Dennis Cardoza told her earlier today that they plan to vote against the earmark-reform package.”
That’s a big disappointment to me, and I suspect it’s a big campaign-issue opportunity for Bob Corker.
ANOTHER UPDATE: As it turned out, Ford voted for the rule change. I’m delighted to discover that, as I found it hard to reconcile his enthusiasm for transparency when we spoke with a “no” vote on this measure.
It’s hazardous to go too far down the chain of causation here, but it can’t have hurt the stiffening of the congressman’s afternoon spine to know that something like 110,000 people were watching while he made up his mind.
More like that, please.
To paraphrase Archimedes (I think):
“Give me a big enough soapbox and I’ll change the world.”