WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama railed against pork-barrel proj ects Wednesday. Then he signed a massive spending bill stuffed with them.
Still, Obama pledged to reform the process by which so-called earmarks end up in spending bills. He unveiled a plan that he said was designed to make sure all projects that benefit from earmarking have a “legitimate” purpose.
Obama said he was signing the $410 billion spending bill, to fund the operations of all but three Cabinet departments, in the interest of keeping the federal government running. The bill won final approval Tuesday, just before a stopgap measure that funded those departments was due to expire.
Republicans had urged the president to veto the bill in a stand against earmarking — the means by which members of Congress direct taxpayer money to particular projects or businesses.
“I am signing an imperfect omnibus bill because it is necessary for the ongoing functions of government, and we have a lot more work to do,” Obama said.
“But I also view this as a departure point for more far-reaching change,” he added.
The president said that, in the future, all earmarks should have a “legitimate and worthy public purpose.” He said that members of Congress who propose them should post them on their websites for public inspection and that the measures should be discussed at public hearings.
Obama said earmarks benefiting for- profit companies should be subject to the same competitive bidding requirements as other federal contracts. He called such earmarks “the single most corrupting element of this practice.” House Democratic lawmakers replied with a reform package of their own, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., saying federal agencies would be asked to review the earmarks that members propose.
Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said the pledges emanating from the White House and congressional Democrats sounded like the saying “Give me sobriety, but not yet.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the most high-profile critic of the practice, said Obama should have threatened to veto any bill that contained irresponsible earmarks. The spending bill Obama signed Wednesday is packed with earmarks to private companies, including 13 that benefit clients of the PMA Group, a lobbying firm in Washington that is under federal investigation for alleged campaign-finance abuses.
Efforts by Republicans this week to strip out those earmarks failed.
“Pardon us if we note the irony of signing a bill into law that contains close to 9,000 earmarks on the very day that the president pushes alleged earmark reform,” said Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio. “It’s like washing down a doughnut with a Slim- Fast shake.”
Obama on Wednesday defended some earmarks as worthwhile and accused Republicans of playing politics.
“Done right, earmarks give legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their district, and that’s why I have opposed their outright elimination,” he said.
