Big Brass Bush Balls

Last night’s State of the Union address, G.W. Bush’s last, really illustrates how our president will leave office with more of a whimper than a bang. 

There was was a surprising amount of self-congratulatory bullshit considering how very little there is for him to take pride in at this point.  Even his claim of success for educational reforms he championed early in his tenure failed to acknowledge many realities. 

Bush noted that African-American and Hispanic students posted all-time high scores. What he did not say is that the "achievement gap" between whites and minorities remains very large. For Hispanics in particular, that gap has not decreased during the period covered by No Child Left Behind initiatives. 

I’m not surprised that he failed to mention the many state and regional education programs that are working around the NCLB system.

The part of his speech that realy made me go digging for a transcipt while picking my chin up off the floor was the section on "earmarks". 

President Bush said:

"Next, there’s the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour, when not even C-SPAN is watching.

In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of the earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and the Senate; they’re dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk.

You didn’t vote them into law. I didn’t sign them into law. Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law.

The time has come to end this practice.

So let us work together to reform the budget process, expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in Congress, and cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half by the end of this session."

Ok,  this all sounds good in theory but it does a huge disservice to the work already being done by the Democratic leadership, particularly the House leadership.  Bush is correct that earmarks have gotten out of hand, but asking the Democratic controlled Congress to do what they are already doing is a bit disingenuous and is aimed to make Bush specifically look good if they succeed and Republicans in general look good if they fail.

Lets look at another quote: 

"The status quo has permitted some members of Congress, with no transparency and accountability, to provide favors to special friends through earmarked special projects — putting special interests ahead of the public interest. The American people deserve to know who is sponsoring earmarks to begin to stop the cases of flagrant abuse of earmarks."   (Source: Democratic party materials used by press to cover the early reforms enacted when the Democratic majority took the reins in January 2007 as reported by Fox News)

In the early days of the current Congress, Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi helped to push through reforms to:

• Cut earmarks in half,
• Force representatives to put their names on earmarks
• Force representatives to defend the purpose of the earmark
• Force the representative to declare that they and their spouses have no financial stake project receiving the earmark. 

These reforms were not pulled out of thin air.  They specifically chosen to address abuses that became rampant under the twelve years of Republican party Congressional leadership.  Keep in mind that it was earmarks like these that landed both Abramoff and California Congressman Randy Cunningham in jail. Jack Abramoff, indicted super-lobbyist and close associate with former House Whip Tom Delay, called  the Appropriations Committee under Republican Chair Lewis a "favor factory."  He was not joking.  Earmarks really took off under Republican Chair Lewis.  

This was true of  Congress as a whole under Republican rule. By 2004 earmarks had climbed to 14,211, worth $52.69 billion dollars after ten years of Republicans in charge. 

The Washington Post produced this graphic to make it perfectly clear:

Two years after the "Contract With America" hoopla all memory of Republican fiscal responsibility went out the window.  From that 1996 low, special earmarks increased in both number and value under the Republican led Congress under both Clinton and G.W. Bush.  The "Bridge to Nowhere" and more recently the "Railroad to Nowhere" are just the most famous of these Republican abuses of the system.  This system of corruption and money for special projects, often projects favored by campaign donors, was so much a part of the way Republicans ran Congress that it became a non-issue for the House Republican leadership. 

Contempt for the minority party and for the American people is best summed up by Rep. Don Young’s (R-Alaska) response to a reporter who approached him near the House Floor to ask him about an earmark giving money that would help a  Florida real estate investor and a Young campaign contributor. 

Mr. Young answered the reporter with an obscene gesture.

Two organization allow citizens to track earmarks and hold their representives accountable.  Taxpayers for Common Sense is a congressional watchdog group that creates a database for all earmarks as soon as bill is introduced. The group then analyzes the information, paying particular attention to signs of earmark abuse.  

Sunlight Foundation has a website with some nifty interactive graphs that help visitors zero in on earmarks and track them back to their source.

Ms. Ryan Alexander, President of Taxpayers for Common Sense issued a statement yesterday saying (emphasis is mine):

“By not including this year’s spending bills, the President is passing the buck on reigning in earmarks. As a lame duck, it’s unlikely that the President will even see any of the spending bills that he wants to fix before he leaves the Oval Office. So, the promise to veto FY09 spending bills that don’t cut earmarks in half from FY08 levels becomes little more than an empty threat because Congress can just run out the clock on him. More importantly, by not including the 2008 spending bills, the Executive Order gives Congress months to finagle their way around these changes.”

“The fact is we have made progress on reforming earmarks. Projects are down and the system is more transparent that it has ever been. Rather than leave the decision to future administrations, the President needs to tell taxpayers the next concrete steps this administration will take to build on the changes made this year and further restrict earmarks this year and in the future.”

I hope Bush gets what he asked for in terms of spending reforms but I also hope he admits to himself, deep down inside, that his State of the Union address, at least in part, is as honest as a downloaded term paper.