By Emelie Rutherford
The White House budget chief warned yesterday the president could veto the fiscal year 2009 defense authorization bill over a provision rejecting an earmark reform initiative.
“The Democrats have dropped veto bait into the defense authorization bill by inserting the earmark provision,” Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jim Nussle said yesterday at an Americans for Tax Reform breakfast, according to Nussle’s office.
At issue is language inserted last week into the fiscal year 2009 defense authorization bill–during the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) markup, by Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.)–saying an executive order on earmarks does not apply to the bill. That executive order, that President Bush signed Jan. 29, bans federal agencies from spending money on earmarks in committee report language, instead of in the actual legislation.
“As a result of Executive Order 13457, earmarks will be subject to the light of day and an up or down vote by lawmakers,” the White House said in a statement when the executive order was issued.
However, the HASC-approved bill, that the House began debating yesterday, specifically states executive order 13457 does not apply to it or to “the Joint Explanatory Statement submitted by the Committee of Conference for the conference report to accompany this Act” or the accompanying House and Senate reports.
Democrats and Republicans on the HASC have defended the move to make the bill exempt from the executive order.
HASC Ranking Member Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) said the order would require the committee to insert the tables detailing funding for sundry defense programs into the actual legislation. Doing so would be problematic, he said, because then the specified funds would be spelled out in statute, and if the Defense Department needed to shift funds from one program to another new legislation to change the law would be needed, instead of submitting a reprogramming request.
“When you’re at war you want to be able to have flexibility for the Pentagon to come over and tell us this factor has changed, or this program is not executable, this policy has already been superseded by something else and we need to change it,” Hunter told reporters yesterday. “And you can’t do that if you put everything in statute.”
He said some spending initiatives that are technically earmarks have merit.
“The jammers that I put in to protect (Marines) against roadside bombs…and they had no portable jammers for the average guy carrying a backpack, technically that’s an earmark,” Hunter said, citing other examples including a measure increasing the size of the Marine Corps.
He pointed out members of Congress can see the program tables–detailing the breakdown of the general funding levels in the actual legislation–before voting on the legislation.
HASC Democratic and Republican aides cited numerous concerns members have with the executive order, in addition to having to migrate the tables into the main legislation. The order also would limit DoD’s and the committee’s budgeting flexibility, and its definition of earmarks is ambiguous–thus making it unclear whether legislative provisions in bill reports would be considered prohibited earmarks, they said.
“This isn’t a partisan issue,” HASC spokeswoman Loren Dealy said. “It’s definitely one that I think there’s bipartisan opposition to.”
Aside from the White House, the HASC’s move against the executive order has not sat well with Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). He filed an amendment to the defense authorization bill this week that would strike the section that bars application of the executive order.
“Obviously the executive order was made for a pretty clear reason and obviously this is a pretty blatant attempt by a House committee to circumvent those rules,” Flake spokesman Matthew Specht said.
As of Defense Daily‘s deadline last night, the House Rules Committee was still considering which amendments to allow members to debate on the House floor. More than 100 amendments were filed, and the committee controlled by Democrats was not expected to allow Flake’s amendment to proceed.
Beyond Flake’s amendment, the HASC will wait for a statement of administration policy from OMB on the earmark issue, HASC Republican spokesman Josh Holly said.