Rep. Tom Reed, who organized the letter, wants to assist a sandal company in New York.. Freshmen: Bring back earmarks

Hypocrisy alert: House Republican freshmen are begging their leaders to bring back a certain type of earmark so that they can help companies back home in an election year.

In a letter to Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, 65 House Republican freshmen — or roughly three-quarters of the class — asked that the House consider a miscellaneous tariff bill jampacked with special provisions to suspend duties on various foreign goods, even though it runs counter to the earmark ban Republicans campaigned on in 2010 and instituted when they took power.


The push is a sign that freshmen who arrived in Washington talking up their anti-pork principles are now worried about what — if anything — they’ll have to show constituents when they hit the campaign trail. And, in typical Washington fashion, they think they’ve found a loophole that will get them past the ban.

It’s a tough call for GOP leaders, and they haven’t yet figured out what to do: keep faith with their promise or bend to the will of freshmen who like the sound of an earmark ban a heck of a lot more than the reality.

Rep. Thomas Reed (R-N.Y.), the freshman who organized the letter, wants to assist Vere, a sandal company in Geneva.

“There are local manufacturers right in the district that will be subject to these additional tariffs,” Reed said on a conference call with reporters Monday. “One that jumps out … just outside the district in Geneva is a sandal company that I believe is going to be impacted by a import tariff if the waiver is not extended at the end of the year. Those are a potential 10 jobs that could be put onto the table, or at least a few of them.”

Vere, which imports material from China, isn’t in Reed’s current district. But it does fall within the lines of the redrawn district he’s seeking reelection in. Vere says on its website that the company uses “American materials where we can find them.”

Boehner and Cantor face additional pressure from Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and other veteran lawmakers who believe that the tariff breaks should never have been included in the earmark ban in the first place.

Camp’s committee has asked lawmakers to submit requests for tariff breaks. In the past, they have included thousands of temporary duty suspensions on materials used to make sneakers, volleyballs, clothing and countless other goods. The idea is to make American manufacturers more competitive by reducing the costs of materials that come from overseas.

In its instructions to lawmakers, the committee says that “it is essential” that requests be noncontroversial and warns that Ways and Means may not include a provision if a lawmaker or domestic producer objects to it.

So the process is moving forward at the committee level with reforms to make the process more transparent. The lawmaker requesting the tariff waiver, for example, must certify the material that would be exempted is widely used. There’s also a public comment period.

But GOP leaders will have to handle blowback from members of the House Appropriations Committee and some spending hawks if they make an exception for these trade earmarks.

“The rules should and do apply equally to all committees,” said Jennifer Hing, a spokeswoman for Appropriations.

And they’ll have to deal with the ugly optics of walking back a central tenet of their promise to clean up Washington.

GOP rules state that “it is the policy of the House Republican Conference that no member shall request a congressional earmark, limited tax benefit or limited tariff benefit, as such terms have been described in the rules of the House.” House rules say a bill has to list all of the limited tariff benefits in it or carry a certification that there are no such benefits in it.

That’s where supporters think they’ve found a loophole. The benefits aren’t “limited,” they say, because they don’t specify a particular company. If that’s the case, the bill could move to the floor with a certification that it doesn’t include a “limited tariff benefit” — a nifty loophole just big enough to squeeze thousands of earmarks through.

Reed and others acknowledge that these special breaks look like earmarks but argue they shouldn’t be treated that way.

“As conservatives, we appreciate these concerns. However, we believe it is an error to view duty suspension bills in that manner,” the freshmen, led by Reed, wrote. “Therefore we urge you to work with the Ways and Means Committee to take swift action to move forward and complete MTB legislation as soon as possible in 2012 to prevent a tax on U.S. manufacturing and save U.S. jobs.”

But the trade portion of the earmark ban was specifically aimed at miscellaneous tariff bills when it was first written.