Last week, the House Republican leadership chose Alabama representative Jo Bonner to fill an empty seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. The seat opened up when Roger Wicker of Mississippi was appointed to the Senate in December to replace Trent Lott. Bonner was a favorite to win the slot: He is on good terms with the leadership and, like Wicker, represents a safe southern district. Bonner also has close ties to appropriators, having served as chief of staff to his predecessor Sonny Callahan, a long-time appropriator.
Appropriations seats are always sought-after, but this time as many as seven Republicans clamored for the prize. Contenders included vulnerable members like Washington's Dave Reichert; Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, who wanted to use the position to fundraise for vulnerable members; and the pork-busting firebrand from Arizona, Jeff Flake.
Flake is a fierce critic of "earmarking," the practice by which appropriators slip district-level "pork" projects into appropriations bills without a floor debate or vote. Many members of the Republican Study Committee, the House's caucus of fiscal conservatives, and conservative bloggers supported his bid. But even though Minority Leader John Boehner wants to reform earmarking--and House Republicans recently tried (and failed) to pass a House-wide earmark moratorium--Flake was considered a long shot for the seat. He has reportedly angered the leadership with his criticism of the appropriations process and Republican spending--criticism that has some justification, given recent history.
In 1995, when Republicans took control of Congress, they were full of promises of fiscal responsibility. Dick
Armey, who became House majority leader that year, says they practiced spending restraint "with very serious rigor"--and discretionary spending decreased from $609.2 billion in 1995 to $581 billion in 1998 in constant dollars. But House Appropriations chairman Bob Livingston soon refused to work with the fiscal-restraint proponent Armey, who was in charge of floor scheduling. At that point, in Armey's telling, "discipline broke down," and discretionary spending began to rise. It hasn't stopped since. In 2006, total discretionary spending, adjusted for inflation, reached $823.5 billion.
The House wasn't the only culprit in the demise of Republican spending restraint. Other players included the Republican Senate (which some policy analysts say is even more extravagant than the House), a Democratic president, and a Republican president with spending initiatives of their own. Add to that the new homeland-security initiatives after 9/11, two wars, Hurricane Katrina, and the allure of earmarks, and all attempts at spending restraint went out the door. In 2006, the party paid dearly at the polls.
Flake and his fellow fiscal conservatives say reining in spending begins with ending earmarks. As Senator Tom Coburn wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed two years ago, "Earmarks are a gateway drug on the road to the spending addiction. One day an otherwise frugal member votes for pork, the next day he or she votes for a bloated spending bill or entitlement expansion: A 'no' vote might cut off their access to earmarks."
Tom Schatz, president of the anti-pork group Citizens Against Government Waste, cites another reason why the number of pork-barrel projects exploded in the mid-1990s: "the belief...that providing earmarks would help vulnerable Republicans get reelected."
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