The Hill reports that OMB director Rob Portman is pledging to track earmarks in all spending bills enacted for 2008:
The White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) stated Thursday that it will keep track of earmarks during the 2008 fiscal year appropriations process.
In a memo to all executive branch agency heads, OMB Director Rob Portman asked all agencies to report to OMB the number and dollar value of earmarks within seven days after an appropriations bill is either reported by the House or Senate appropriations committees or passed on the House or Senate floor.
"We are going to be more aggressive on earmarks going into the appropriations cycle," said Portman at a meeting with reporters. "The notion is not that every earmark is bad or there shouldn't be any earmarks. The notion is that this has gotten out of control."
Good government groups will join fiscal conservatives in welcoming this good news. But perhaps your optimism will be tempered when you find out who else is enthusiastically backing this development:
A spokesman for Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) said that OMB should have no problem in finding earmarks, thanks to new transparency requirements.
"They should have a very easy time in identifying those earmarks," said spokesman Tom Gavin. "All of that information will made be available and in a very upfront fashion."
This sounds suspiciously like the fox giving compliments on the security at the henhouse. Can there be any explanation other than that he's figured out a way to pick the lock?
In the case of Senator Byrd, it might be that he's pleased with the way 'phonemarking 'is going:
When the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives passed one of its first spending bills, funding the Energy Department for the rest of 2007, it proudly boasted that the legislation contained no money earmarked for lawmakers' pet projects and stressed that any prior congressional requests for such spending "shall have no legal effect."
Within days, however, lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) began directly contacting the Energy Department. They sought to secure money for their favorite causes outside of the congressional appropriations process -- a practice that lobbyists and appropriations insiders call "phonemarking."
The truth is that phonemarking is a sign of important progress in the effort to squelch earmarked spending. 'Phonemarks' cannot be made legally binding; it's up to the Executive Branch to decide whether to cooperate in the process.
The next logical step for earmark opponents may be to push federal agencies to monitor and disclose all efforts by members of Congress and their staffs to 'lobby' for specific spending items--whether that lobbying occurs by phone, E-mail, letter, or other means.
