Spenders suddenly become Savers
By Carl Hulse
Selecting the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee in a new Congress a party vote is expected Tuesday is the 1st step in perhaps the most audacious aspect of John A. Boehners plan to alter the way the House
works. One of the most powerful & now paradoxical jobs in government will be leading House Appropriations as Republicans try to transform a fountain of federal spending into ground zero for budget cutting.
Jerry Lewis Republican of California is one of three candidates in the race for one of Like Mr. Lewis the other two leading candidates Representatives Harold Rogers of Kentucky and Jack Kingston of Georgia are campaigning to convince their partys leadership that they can cast aside their own histories as earmarkers and pork-allocators and lead a shift in focus from how to spend it to how to save it.
To make the effort more than a slogan will mean upending one of the most entrenched cultures in Washington a bipartisan tradition of directing money to favored causes with an eye as much to political gain as to policy outcome. Under both parties the committee has long been a power unto itself a secretive realm where subcommittee chairmen hold sway over Cabinet secretaries and generals and funding can almost magically materialize or disappear for little-scrutinized local projects even as national priorities are set or dismissed.
Leading the committee toward a belt-tightening mandate would also mean taking on an entire industry that has been built up around the federal trough a complex of lobbyists consultants and corporations who that feeds off the competition for dollars and with some regularity produces scandals and provides a substantial chunk of the campaign contributions that fuel the American political system.
It has been a favor factory for years and now it is going to become a slaughterhouse" said Representative Jeff Flake an Arizona Republican and longtime antagonist of the Appropriations Committee who is in line to be one of several antispending conservatives on the panel. It is going to get ugly."
All the candidates for chairman have more than 15 years on the committee and all have hungrily sought earmarks. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense in the last fiscal year Mr. Lewis won 62 earmarks worth $97.6 million followed by Mr. Rogers with 59 costing $93.4 million and Mr. Kingston 40 worth $66.8 million.
Mr. Lewis was chairman of the committee before Democrats took control of the House in 2006 and would need a special exemption to be chairman again because of party-imposed term limits. In campaigning for the job he has stressed his past efforts to push spending cuts. Mr. Rogers has emphasized his
willingness to confront the executive branch on spending and his party fund-raising. Mr. Kingston has the backing of some outside fiscal watchdogs and pledges a new openness on the panel.
The team of Republican leaders planning to take over the House on Jan. 5 is exploring a variety of changes intended to break the committees spending mindset starting with the new majoritys promise to slice $100 billion from President Obamas budget request for the current fiscal year.
The three longtime committee members who aspire to head the panel have clearly gotten the message.
Like Mr. Lewis his two rivals for the chairmanship Mr. Rogers Mr. Kingston are also committee members who have promised to devote themselves to paring spending though all have funneled money to scores of projects through earmarks in past bills. The effort to reshape the committee promises to be a stern test of Republicans rededication to fiscal sobriety after falling off the wagon during the dozen years through 2006 that their party controlled the House when government spending rose at rapid rates.
They have promised things that they have neither delivered in the past nor in my opinion are going to be able to deliver on in the future" said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland the No. 2 House Democrat and a veteran of the Appropriations Committee himself.
To succeed and satisfy the conservative Tea Party-style voters that propelled them to power Republicans will have to quickly make significant cuts in government programs and somehow find a way to enact those cuts into law in cooperation with a Democratically controlled Senate and a Democratic president.
It will not be easy. In this years turbulent political atmosphere the Democratic Congress passed exactly zero appropriations bills leaving the government running under a stop-gap measure at the moment.
Republicans acknowledge they are setting lofty goals when it comes to Congressional appropriations but are serious about reaching them.
They have already banned earmarks the pet spending projects that have been the fruit of service on the committee and hope to give members of the committee more time to focus on oversight of agencies in pursuit of savings. Besides Mr. Flake the leadership plans to install other Republicans who have
railed against spending on the panel.
I want to place as many reformers as I can on the committee" Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia the No. 2 House Republican said.
House Republicans also say they will no longer allow consideration of omnibus spending measures those unwieldy and impenetrable conglomerations of multiple spending bills that are hard for members to oppose since they contain so many politically sensitive and popular programs.
Instead they are considering breaking spending legislation into smaller pieces raising the prospect that they would have to pass scores of individual bills on the House floor to fund the government on an agency-by-agency basis allowing a more focused debate on priorities but also creating the potential for legislative gridlock.
In a move that was symbolic but telling the new leadership last week disclosed that it was ousting the Appropriations Committee from its prime office space just steps from the House floor ordering the panel to vacate the rooms where such legendary chairmen as James Garfield Joe Cannon and Jamie Whitten have held sway since the Civil War.
The Appropriations Committee has not only enjoyed a privileged status on Capitol Hill; it has also been a route to greater Congressional power. The top three House Democrats Speaker Nancy Pelosi Mr. Hoyer and Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina all served on the panel and cut their Congressional teeth there.
In contrast Mr. Boehner has spent his career resisting earmarks and he and his fellow Republican leaders have not sat on the Appropriations Committee freeing them to push for major changes but leaving some wondering if they understand the panels delicate workings enough to avoid mistakes that could paralyze the spending process.
If the Appropriations Committee cant figure out a way to get the White House the Senate and the House together on a common ground then you hit a brick wall and critical parts of the government start to fall apart" said Scott Lilly a former top Democratic staffer on the committee who is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress a liberal research group.
Even some Republican members of the committee expressed doubt about the prospect of considering separate measures for individual agencies rather than the dozen bills that combine many Cabinet departments. We have had a hard time passing 12 bills" said Representative Mike Simpson Republican of Idaho so if you try to do 40 or 50 it is kind of tough."
The aspirants for the chairmanship say that changing the spending culture will depend to some degree on public support which in the wake of the midterm election they say is there.
When you go from a spending history as a committee to a cutting committee it is not automatic" Mr. Lewis said. But the thing we have going for us that we havent had in recent decades is that suddenly the public is involved."
