A McCain-Feingold on pork?

posted at 11:32 am on January 9, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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When John McCain and Russ Feingold last partnered on policy, they produced the abomination titled the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, but better known as McCain-Feingold.  The Hill reports that the two want to partner again, but this time to focus on actual official abuses of power.  They want to press Congress to ban earmarks altogether in the spirit, they say, of Barack Obama’s pledge to “ban” them from the stimulus plan:

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) are renewing their longtime reform partnership to launch an aggressive attack on earmarks.

McCain, back to the daily Senate routine after his failed White House bid, joined Sens. Feingold, Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Wednesday to unveil a landmark bill they will try to add as an amendment to the economic stimulus legislation.

The measure is part of what appears to be a broad push for earmark reform in the 111th Congress. The chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations committees on Tuesday announced more transparency requirements for earmarks in fiscal 2010 appropriations bills, such as requiring members to post their pet project requests online and releasing earmarks tables at the subcommittee level. …

McCain said he was encouraged that President-elect Obama had pledged to have an earmark-free economic stimulus bill and echoed one of his most aggressive pledges of the campaign: “Our goal is not transparency. Our goal is the elimination of earmarks.”

It’s good to see McCain and Feingold focusing on real abuses of power, rather than attacking political speech and protecting incumbents.  Both Senators have fought earmarks for years, and have a large amount of credibility to act against them now.  It certainly beats having him work on immigration reform, and given the entrenched nature of pork-barrel politics, we can hope that the new Feingold-McCain effort will absorb the entirety of both Senators’ schedules.

However, don’t hold your breath about seeing this passed, at least not in the short term.  Obama may be sympathetic to their cause, but Obama earmarked almost a billion dollars in his short tenure in the Senate, too.  The so-called “transparency” initiatives by the Appropriations chairs will take some of the wind out of the porkbusting sails as well, unless porkers get stupid enough to keep adding Lobstercams to the federal budget.  McCain derided the $188,000 grant to the Lobster Institute for the creation of a webcam site and “lobster dog biscuit” research.

I’d call this a long shot in the 111th Congress.  Harry Reid, who once opined that the Founding Fathers created Congress for the purpose of porking up the budget, isn’t going to rush to schedule a vote on Feingold-McCain.  It’s still worthy of the effort, and of our support, as long as it delivers on its promise and actually eliminates earmarks.

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