110th United States Congress

The Democratic party which gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2006 Congressional midterm elections had promised major reforms within the first 100 hours. One reform in particular was lobbying and ethics reform--a key plank in the fall 2006 campaign. Democrats vowed greater openness in the Congressional Appropriations process, and an end to so-called "earmarks", an appropriation designated to spend specific money on a specific project in a specific members district, sometimes designating a specific private business concern to whom the money is to be spent with. Several Republican members had been caught up in so-called earmark scandals, trading money for influence, and this was widely accredited as a key reason why the GOP lost control of the House after a dozen years.

Achievements

In the first five months of 2007 after the Democratic party took control of Congress, the majority party,

• Reissued a "blank check" to the President on the Iraq War, which allegedly was opposed by 70 percent in opinion polls and was vociferously opposed by many Congressional candidates in 2006. The bill included an increase in the minimum wage.

• Successfully renamed six post offices, four courthouses, a national park, and one of the buildings housing the Department of Education in Washington. They also extended the lives of two government commissions, reduced the membership of the Red Cross board of governors from 50 to 20, and authorized construction of 541 feet of road on a flood plain in St. Louis County, Missouri.

• Kept the government going with two temporary spending bills, completed no regular appropriations bills, redesignated five Eastern European countries (Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, Georgia and Ukraine) for security aid, and passed a bill on penalties for animal fighting that had passed in the Republican Congress last year.

• Voted to kill lobbying reforms that were part of the 2006 Honest Leadership and Open Government Act Democratic candidates made a centerpiece of their campaign message in 2006.

Earmark reform

A House ethics panel is led by a lawmaker who holds the record for taking the most free travel, while another panel member was implicated in the recent flap over the firing of U.S. attorneys. The earmark process by which so-called "pork barrel" projects are doled out to members by June of 2007 saw no major changes. In fact, rules approved the first day in power in January, the Associated Press reported, where being ignored. Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, instructed members to withhold "earmark requests" until September.

According to the Associated Press, what Obey did ran counter to new rules Democrats promised that would make spending decisions more open. Those rules made it clear that projects earmarked for federal dollars and their sponsors were to be made available to public scrutiny. The rules also require lawmakers requesting such projects to provide a written explanation describing their requests and a letter certifying that they or their spouse would not make any financial gain from them. The greater transparency was intended to lead to more self-discipline on the part of lawmakers. Two weeks later, a group called Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) reported that after a wave of protest from across the political spectrum, Democrats backed down from plans to keep taxpayers in the dark about tens of billions of dollars in congressionally earmarked spending. CAGW President Tom Schatz said “Chairman Obey wanted to stay behind closed doors and play ‘God’ with earmarks, but the taxpayers won this battle for transparency and accountability.”

External links

• The Real Democrat Story, Open the File on the Freshmen Democrats.