Momentum builds against earmarks

Momentum builds against earmarks President Bush called on Congress during his televised State of the Union address to cut in half the number and dollar amount of earmarks this year in an effort to cut wasteful spending and balance the budget.
   In 2006, lawmakers inserted into legislation 13,000 anonymous spending orders. Bush called for each pet spending project to be transparent rather than being slipped into committee reports in the minutes before a vote.
   The new Democratic-led Senate a week ago overwhelmingly passed an ethics reform bill that among other things would require lawmakers to attach their name to favored funding provisions.
   Public and private sector advocates for addressing freight transportation infrastructure bottlenecks were dismayed by the 2005 multiyear surface transportation spending plan because more than 6,000 earmarks gobbled up money that could have been used for priority projects to connect freight modes.
   'We hate earmarks,” said John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, during a panel discussion Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington.
   'States much prefer the systematic funding that takes place at the state level and the MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization) level,' he said. The Seattle-Tacoma-Everett region, for example, recently developed a $400 million investment plan for freight transportation improvements.
   In some instances earmarks actually support worthy projects, Horsley said, pointing to the $100 million Congress authorized to support a $1.5 billion project to untangle rail lines in the Chicago area. The Class I railroads, state and city governments had asked for $900 million. They are chipping in their own money too, but have had to scale back the speed of project development until more federal money becomes available.