This morning, Senate Appropriations chair Robert Byrd (D-WV) announced that his committee would immediately adopt the earmark disclosure rules advocated by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) in S. Res. 123 that we reported on last week. Under the new committee rules,

• all earmarks in appropriations bills and reports would be identified, with the amount, the sponsor and the recipient of the earmark; the committee bill and report will be published on the Internet
• earmarks would be defined as any legislative provision or report language that authorizes or recommends a specific amount of discretionary budget authority for any entity, whether a federal agency or a private organization
• Senators would have to certify that neither they nor their spouses have any financial interest in the earmark

Sen. DeMint said, "There's no reason at all we shouldn't adopt this rule as a Senate rule... "[Without a Senate] rule, we have no authority to call [Byrd] to account. We have no leverage here."

Democratic leaders say they aren't pre-empting DeMint, but urging him and his GOP supporters to wait for the lobbying bill -- which includes the DeMint proposal adopted unanimously by the Senate -- to pass the House, get signed by the president, and become law.

An open question: is this the completion of the "reform process" sufficient for Sen. Byrd to lift his "moratorium on all earmarks"?

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and four GOP colleagues wrote Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-TN) yesterday that they want the Senate to take up S. Res. 123, a earmarks disclosure rule. The Senate passed a statutory version of the rule unanimously as part of S. 1, the ethics and and lobbying reform bill adopted 96-2 in January. DeMint and Sens. Coburn (OK), Cornyn (TX), Enzi (WY), and Chambliss (GA) said they will seek unanimous consent next Tuesday to consider the measure. As a resolution, it would become an internal rule of the Senate and, unlike S. 1, not require House approval.

As the authors write, the resolution requires that:

information related to earmarks contained in committee-passed bills... must be made available in a searchable format on the Internet, [including] name of the senator requesting the earmark, the name and address of the intended recipient of the earmark, the purpose of the earmark, and a certification that the requesting senator and his or her spouse have no financial interest in the requested earmarks.

House Speaker Nancy's Pelosi's office has said that House leadership hopes to put S. 1 up for House floor consideration prior to Memorial Day. That timetable presents problems for the DeMint quintet, who note that specific omissions in the Fiscal Year 2008 earmark solicitation forms being circulated by Senate appropriations subcommittees "clearly demonstrate that it's time for the Senate to stop dragging its feet on this critical issue."

Appropriators are preparing to draft their FY 2008 spending bills, with budget hearings coming to a close and the budget resolution expected to go to conference next week.

A March 31 article entitled Transparency Takes a Hit by Robert Bluey of Heritage supports an idea we've offered below.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) produced thorough reports on earmarks in appropriations acts in FYs 94, 96, 98, 2000, 02, 04, 05, and 06, calculating the number and dollar value of earmarks originating both from the Executive Branch and from Congress.

But last month, CRS suddenly decided to desist with these reports, citing reasons that defy comprehension. Per Bluey:

CRS has said its research is no longer needed because the Office of Management and Budget will track earmarks -- a true statement, except for the fact that its information is nowhere near as comprehensive. [OMB's database omits Executive Branch-generated earmarks.] CRS also cites new rules adopted by Congress to publicly disclose earmarks. However, the House rule applies only to 2008 spending bills, not previous ones, and the Senate's rule is still bottled up as part of the Democrats' stalled ethics reform bill.

Have a look at the most recent of these CRS reports. It suggests that a product combining CRS' scope and methodology and the OMB website's specificity, citations, and public accessibility would be of greatest value to the government and the general public.

In the first 100 hours of the current Congress, the House enacted a package of ethics and lobbying reforms that included banning members of Congress from receiving gifts and free meals and travel from lobbyists. About a month later, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tapped Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA) to head up a bipartisan task force to explore whether to create an independent office to enforce House ethics rules. Capuano's findings are due May 1, but expected later that month.

Meanwhile, freshman House member Baron Hill (D-IN) and ten other Democratic members introduced a bill shortly before recess, the "House Ethics Commission Establishment Act of 2007," calling for an independent commission comprised of 12 former House members. Key features of the bill:

• six former Democratic members would be appointed by the House GOP leader; six Republican counterparts would be appointed by the Democratic leader
• registered lobbyists (within the last four years) would be ineligible to serve
• a majority vote would be required for any disciplinary actions recommended by the commission to take effect

A tie vote, not unforseeable on a 6-6 bipartisan panel, would defeat any recommendation.

Rep. Hill did not consult Capuano before introducing the bill, which could be seen to prejudge the findings of Capuano's task force.

The next steps for the OMB earmarks database team are clear and easily accomplished -- moving quickly to add the FY 2006 earmarks to the database, this time including earmarks requested by the Bush administration.

How easy would it be to do this? Well, a quick look at the Congressional Research Service memo of March 6, entitled "Earmarks in the FY 2006 Appropriation Acts," obtained by OMB Watch, suggests that it's already been done.

Below are two key caveats regarding the OMB earmark database project we lauded yesterday.

• Limited Scope of Earmarks -- to include only congressionally-sourced earmarks. See OMB's own definition:

  Earmarks are funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient ... for activities/projects/programs not requested by the Administration. (Emph. added.)

• Focus on Quantity, not Merits of Earmarks -- The administration's fixation on slashing the number of congressionally-sourced earmarks by 50 percent this year is misplaced. The Iraq Study Group began life as a lowly $1 million earmark, after all. The point of increased transparency is to expose wasteful, unneeded projects such as the Bridge to Nowhere, ideally, long before they make it into the OMB database.

Without fanfare or forewarning, OMB has, as of this morning, put up its long-promised database on the number and cost of 2005 earmarks, displaying that information by agency and state.

The website has very limited sortability functions. But most earmarks entries include a citation back to specific authorizing legislative or report language or, failing that, a citation summary. OMB says there's more to come, including "Browse authorization earmarks" and "Search Website full text" functions.

It is fair to say that OMB has produced this database much more quickly than had been expected after missing the orginal March 12 deadline set out in its Janaury 25 memorandum. And the site is a completely comprehensive accounting of all 2005 earmarks (defined in Attachment B of the memorandum).

This is a remarkable achievement in terms of advancing government spending transparency and, worth noting, of OMB's own initiative -- no statute or Presidential order compelled them to produce this database.