Nussle wants no earmarks in ’07 fed budget
U.S. Rep. Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, has proposed that there be no new earmarks in the 2007 federal budget, but a spokesman said the congressman will continue to fight for “Iowa priorities.”
Nussle, the House Budget Committee chairman and a candidate for governor, said the earmarks make up only a small part of the $2.7 trillion annual budget, but “there’s nothing small about billions of dollars,” according to an account in the Congressional Quarterly publication.
Nussle’s comments, made this week at a budget hearing, may raise eyebrows in the Quad-Cities, where congressional earmarks are expected to be vital to building a new Interstate 74 bridge.
In fact, the multi-year transportation bill signed into law last year included about $68 million in congressional earmarks.
Chris Bliley, Nussle’s chief of staff, said the congressman from Manchester has made the proposal in the past, but once colleagues turned it down, “he has fought for Iowa priorities.” Bliley said that would continue to be the case.
Nussle, along with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., played a major role in securing a $50 million earmark for the I-74 bridge in last year’s transportation bill, a measure that has since been reviled by critics for being stuffed with so-called congressional pork.
Federal budget deficits and lobbying scandals are prompting a rethinking of the earmarks practice, a term given to home-state projects that congressmen insert into appropriations and other bills.
Lately, they have been the target of critics who say they too often are inserted during the dead of night and passed with little scrutiny.
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, offered that criticism during a conference call with Iowa reporters. But he defended earmarks in general, repeatedly calling them “congressionally directed funding” that gives small states such as Iowa a chance against larger states and a huge federal bureaucracy.
He also had words of warning for the I-74 project if earmarks are done away with completely. “The I-74 bridge, you can just kiss it goodbye if we’re going to do away with this congressionally directed funding,” he added.
The bridge is expected to cost more than $600 million. Planners are in the preliminary stages and construction is not expected to start for years.
An official at the Bi-State Regional Commission, the area’s transportation policy agency, said she is not overly concerned about Nussle’s earmark proposal. Denise Bulat, the executive director of Bi-State, said the agency’s intent is to secure the bulk of future earmarks through long-term transportation bills, not annual appropriations bills.
Still, Harkin said talk of doing away with earmarks should be a matter of concern. “They should be very worried,” he said.
If there is a long-term appetite for doing away with earmarks, it is not clear how ravenous that is, though.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee asked Republicans agitating for limits on earmarks to volunteer to give up the ones they secured in the transportation bill. He had only one taker, a congressman from New Hampshire.
Ed Tibbetts can be contacted at
(563) 383-2327 or etibbetts@qctimes.com.