earmarking as a practice in the Senate

MCCAIN STATEMENT ON PASSAGE OF LOBBYING REFORM BILL

Thursday, Mar 30, 2006

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) submitted for the record the following statement on the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006:

Mr. President, let me begin by commending the hard work of my colleagues in this effort. The Chair and ranking member of the Governmental Affairs Committee Senators Collins and Lieberman, and the Chair and ranking member of the Rules Committee Senators Lott and Dodd, have worked tirelessly and in a bipartisan manner to bring a bill to the floor. I regret, however, that I find it necessary to vote against final passage of this measure because it simply doesn’t do enough to address the critical need for comprehensive lobbying reform. We had a golden opportunity to institute real reform and prove to the American people that we are not completely oblivious to their concerns. Unfortunately, Mr. President, we dropped the ball.

While it does contain some good provisions to increase lobbyist disclosure and reporting requirements, the bill lacks imperative enforcement measures. We can pass all of the Rules changes we want in this body, but they are useless unless we back it up with a tough enforcement mechanism. I was disappointed that the Collins-Lieberman-McCain amendment to create a Senate Office of Public Integrity was defeated yesterday. That office would have had the ability to investigate complaints of ethical violations by Senators, staff, or officers of this chamber. Headed by a Director appointed by the President Pro Tem of the Senate upon the joint recommendation of the majority and minority leaders, the Office of Public Integrity would investigate complaints of rules violations filed with or initiated by the Office.

At a time when the public is questioning our integrity, the Senate needs to more aggressively enforce its own rules. We should do this not just by making more public the work that the Senate Ethics Committee currently undertakes, but by addressing the conflict that is inherent in any body that regulates itself. By rejecting the creation of a new office with the capacity to conduct and initiate investigations, and a perspective uncolored by partisan concerns or collegial relationships, we neglected to address this long-standing structural problem.

The proposed Office of Public Integrity would not only have assisted in performing existing investigative functions, but would also have been charged with approving or denying requests for travel by members and staff. Rather than prohibit official travel paid for by any entity other than the federal government, as some have proposed, our proposal would have required that all travel to be pre-cleared. The purpose of this pre-clearance was to ensure that the trips serve a legitimate governmental interest, and are not substantially recreational in nature. The Office of Public Integrity would have been an appropriate entity to conduct these reviews - but, sadly, the Senate voted to maintain the status quo.

Another critical aspect of reform that is not addressed in this bill is the ability of a Member to travel on a corporate jet and only pay the rate of a first class plane ticket. Because cloture was invoked on this bill yesterday, Senator Santorum and I were prevented from offering an amendment that would have required Senators and their employees who use corporate or charter aircraft to pay the fair market value for that travel.

Senator Santorum and I were well aware that our amendment would not be popular with some of our colleagues, but we felt that the time had come for us to fundamentally change the way we do things in this town. Much of the public views our ability to travel on corporate jets, often accompanied by lobbyists, while only reimbursing the first-class rate, as a huge loophole in the current gift rules. And they’re right - it is. I have no doubt that the average American would love to fly around the country on very comfortable corporate-owned aircraft and only be charged the cost of a first-class ticket. It’s a pretty good deal we’ve got going here. We need to face the fact that the time has come to end this Congressional perk.

There is a public perception that these lobbyist-arranged flights unduly influence Members of Congress and serve as a way for lobbyists to curry favor with legislators and their aides. We must change that perception, Mr. President. There was nothing in our amendment that would have prohibited a Member from using corporate aircraft - it simply required that they pay the fair market value of the flight. It was a fair, reasonable approach designed to prove to the American public that we are serious about reform and would do what is necessary to restore the public’s trust - but, again, the Senate chose to maintain the status quo by preventing us from offering our amendment.

Finally, Mr. President, this bill does not go far enough to reign in the practice of earmarking federal funds in the annual appropriations bills. Together with Sens. Coburn, Ensign, Feingold, Kyl, DeMint, Sununu, and Graham, I was prepared to offer an amendment that would amend the Senate Rules to allow points of order to be raised against unauthorized appropriations, earmarks, and policy riders in appropriations bills and conference reports in an effort to reign in wasteful pork barrel spending. If the point of order were successful, the objectionable provisions would be stricken and the related funding would be reduced accordingly. Once again, we were blocked from offering this amendment as well.

In my judgement, if we are really committed to addressing comprehensive lobbying reform in a meaningful and effective way, we need to include earmark reform provisions in this legislative package. The process is clearly broken when each year Congress continues to earmark billions and billions of taxpayers dollars, sometimes with little or almost no knowledge about the specifics of those earmarks by most of the members of this body. Sadly, the scandal that has come to light recently concerning the earmarking by one former member of the House is a pox not just on him, but on each of us and the process that we have allowed to occur on our watch. The American public deserves better and that is what my amendment was about.

In 1994, there were 4,126 earmarks. In 2005, there were 15,877--an increase of nearly 400 percent! But there was a little good news for 2006 solely due to the good sense that occurred unexpectedly when the Labor HHS appropriations bill was approved with almost no earmarks,
an amazing feat given that there were over 3,000 earmarks
the prior year for just that bill. Yet despite this first reduction in 12 years, it doesn’t change the fact that
the largest number of earmarks have still occurred in the last three years 2004, 2005, and 2006.

Now, let’s consider the level of funding associated with those earmarks. The amount of earmarked funding increased from
$23.2 billion in 1994 to $64 billion in FY 2006. Remarkably,
it rose by 34 percent from 2005 to 2006, even though
the number of earmarks decreased! Earmarked dollars
have doubled just since 2000, and more than tripled in
the last 10 years. This is wrong and disgraceful and we urgently need to make some changes in this process.

Mr. President, we, as Members, owe it to the American
people to conduct ourselves in a way that reinforces, rather than diminishes, the public’s faith and confidence in Congress. An informed citizenry is essential to a thriving democracy. And, a democratic government operates best in the disinfecting light of the public eye. This bill could go so much further to balance the right of the public to know with its right to petition government; the ability of lobbyists to advocate their clients’ causes with the need for truthful public discourse; and, the ability of Members to legislate with the imperative that our government must be free from corrupting influences, both real and perceived. We must act now to ensure that the erosion we see today in the public’s confidence in Congress does not become a collapse of confidence. We can, and we must, do better than this bill.



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