Opportunity knocks for the “Reborn Conservatism” touted by Minority Leader John Boehner and his Whip Roy Blunt. There are huge appropriations bills coming up in a lame-duck session before the majority transitions into the minority.
Here’s a grading scale: A: The Appropriations are weeded through, eliminating programs that reflect a fat, bloaded bureaucracy – and all 12,000 or so earmarks are removed.
GRADE: B minus — 12,000 or so earmarks removed, but much fat still in Appropriations bills.
GRADE: D — Republicans pass the buck, pass resolutions to keep the government open, and let the new Democrat Majority deal with it. This would mean failing to use the opportunity to prove their new rhetoric.
GRADE: F — Republicans are all talk and approve the massive spending packages that include the earmarks.
The significance of an A grade, or even the B- are important. You see, one of the major underlying factors that has led the GOP to growing government has been the influnce of the lobbyists (called “K Street” because so many lobbyist have offices there). Each of those thousands of earmarks have lobbyists advocating for them that have spent years cozying up to our Republican legislators. Even worse was a disasterous program to force/encourage lobbying firms to hire Republicans. It worked well, as these new “GOP lobbyists” apparently had no trouble co-opting the majority party.
Are Boehner and Blunt prepared to send a message to base Republican voters, and to K-Street, that there is a new GOP leadership now? Which promises take priority now? The ones made to the lobbyists to pass the special-interest earmarks? Or the new promises made in the leadership elections that Republicans just undertook?
Care to guess what will happen?
November 18th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I’m just going to guess that it very little gets cleaned out of the bill. I think it’s a lot harder for politicians to say no to lobbyists than their own constituents. So, as the Governor has said in the past, “the money goes in the favors go out.” And so the story goes.
I suppose the interesting question will be whether the Dems have a K street project. I certainly hope not, because the last thing we need is a budget full of blind earmarks. I sincerely hope that we can get rid of the blind earmarks in this next ethics bill.