GOP wants Obama veto of earmarks

The top two House Republican leaders are calling on President Barack Obama to veto any spending bill containing earmarks, raising the stakes in a battle to claim purity on project-specific spending by Congress.

The joint statement, issued by incoming House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), pre-empts an embargoed weekly radio address by Obama in which he will criticize earmarks that are not given thorough vetting.
Public frustration with federal spending levels and ostentatious projects has turned earmarking – once a common and relatively unremarkable congressional prerogative – into a political battleground. And GOP leaders are trying to grab the high ground in advance of Obama’s remarks. They're also laying a marker on the spending battle that is certain to become one of the premier battles among the power centers of a newly divided government in the next Congress.

“Next week, the House Republican Conference, including all of our newly elected members, will vote on a measure that would impose an immediate ban on earmarks at the start of the 112th Congress,” Boehner and Cantor said. “We welcome President Obama’s remarks on earmark reform, and we call upon him to urge congressional Democrats to hold a vote next week on a similar measure. Furthermore, if the president is committed to real earmark reform, he could demonstrate that immediately by agreeing to veto any spending measure this year or next that includes earmarks.”

Some in the GOP would like Boehner and Cantor to go farther than a two-year moratorium on earmarks by banning them outright and permanently.

In the Senate, Republicans are set to vote next week on a proposal by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) to ban earmarks. But with Democrats in control of the chamber, there’s little chance that senators will ultimately abstain from sending money directly back to their states for specific projects.

That reality provided the window for Boehner and Cantor to challenge the White House to reject spending bills that carry earmarks. In his weekly radio address, to be delivered Saturday morning, Obama does not call for an outright ban on earmarks but rather appeals for an end to those that slip through without proper vetting.

New rules imposed in the last few years have ensured that the sponsors and recipients of the vast majority of earmarks are identified in legislation, providing greater transparency to a process that was once largely obscured from public view.


(source:politico.com)