Daniel Inouye said his committee has banned earmarks for two years. Senate Dems give in on earmark ban

Senate Democrats dealt a near-fatal blow to earmarks on Tuesday, giving in to the demands of President Barack Obama and House Republicans who have pushed for their demise.

A renowned earmarker, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), announced that his panel will ban earmarks from any bills in the next two years, a move that would effectively block senators from sending money to their home states in spending bills.


Not only is the decision a bruising loss for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who squared off with the president last week, but also a signal of how seriously Washington plans to take public criticism of its spendthrift ways, which helped usher in a new GOP majority in the House last fall.

The earmarking process has been in limbo since Obama pledged during his State of the Union address last week that he would veto any bill that arrives at his desk riddled with the pet projects. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) had already outlawed earmarks in the House.

Reid, meanwhile, vowed to fight the White House, telling the president to “back off.” But in the end, Reid was backed into a corner: He couldn’t get a bill with earmarks through the House, and even if he had, the president would have blocked its final passage.

“The handwriting is clearly on the wall,” Inouye said in a statement. “The president has stated unequivocally that he will veto any legislation containing earmarks, and the House will not pass any bills that contain them. Given the reality before us, it makes no sense to accept earmark requests that have no chance of being enacted into law.”

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, agreed that earmarks are important, but noted that the political reality facing Congress has changed.

“We’re being pragmatic about this year, but we also [believe] strongly that, as members of Congress, we have to represent our states and fight for them,” Murray said.

Senate Republicans appeared reluctant Tuesday to gloat about the Democrats’ about-face — perhaps because a similar fight over earmarks divided their own caucus shortly after the November midterm elections.

Tea-party-backed Republican senators, including South Carolina’s Jim DeMint and Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn, forced Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other old bulls to vow to swear off earmarks, paving the way for the Senate Republican Conference to pass a two-year moratorium.

“I know the good that has come from the projects I have helped support throughout my state. I don’t apologize for them,” McConnell said on the Senate floor last November. “But there is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and the out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight.”

Freshman Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who requested tens of millions of dollars in earmarks as a congressman but voted for the Senate GOP ban, calling the Democrats’ move “a pretty practical decision.”

“It seems consistent with what the House is going to require,” Moran told POLITICO. “I can’t imagine that there would be an appropriations bill that would be conferenced and pass the House if it had an earmark.”

Inouye said his committee will send each senator a copy of Senate rule 44, which provides a definition of an earmark. That raised concerns for some taxpayer watchdog groups, which have quarreled with Senate leaders in recent years over what is and isn’t an earmark.

But overall, the groups praised Inouye’s announcement, noting that only 50 lawmakers had opposed earmarks at the start of the last Congressin January 2009.

“An earmark ban is only the first step to reigning in the massive federal debt, out-of-control federal spending and the broken budgeting process in Washington,” Brian Baker, president of the nonpartisan group Taxpayers Against Earmarks, said in a statement. “We will be watching to make sure that our elected officials don’t break their promises to the American people.”

Earmarks account for less than half of one percent of the federal budget and would do little in the way of reducing the budget. However, the move is a powerful symbol in a year when Republicans retook control of the House, riding an anti-spending wave of support from the tea party movement.

“We have a huge debt and deficit problem in this country and we need to get spending under control,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. “It’s a small step but a step in the right direction.”

But Inouye says he still believes lawmakers have a constitutional right to direct spending to their states — and he’s not giving up all hope just yet. Senate Democrats will revisit the issue next year “to explore ways to improve the earmarking process.”

“At the appropriate time,” Inouye said, “I will once again urge the Senate to consider a transparent and fair earmark process that protects our rights as legislators to answer the petitions of our constituents, regardless of what the president or some federal bureaucrat thinks is right.”