-
Don’t Ban Earmarks--Fix Them
Tweet Share on Facebook February 9, 2012 Comment (4)This week's Washington Post investigative feature on congressional earmarking highlights serious—but fixable—problems with the earmark vetting process. Tuesday's article identified $300 million in member-directed funds for projects located so close to properties of the sponsoring lawmakers that they may have benefited financially from the funding. Wednesday's article named 16 members of Congress who had ordered earmarks for organizations or businesses that employ their own family members. Predictably, some legislators are already calling for a permanent ban on all earmarking. Although the articles raise questions that the Ethics Committees should thoroughly investigate and punish if warranted, the best solution isn't to ban earmarks but rather to oversee them more carefully, make them completely transparent, and severely punish those who violate conflict of interest laws.
-
Bipartisanship In Congress Can Start Small, But It Must Start
Tweet Share on Facebook January 24, 2012 Comment (5)I like to think of the day of the State of the Union as America's annual civic sabbath, a periodic opportunity to gather as a community and reflect on our progress. Unfortunately, this year's assessment won't be as positive as we'd like. Certainly 2012 is not 1863 or 1917 or 1941, but it's still hard to shake the overwhelming sense that we face urgent challenges and our political institutions might be too broken to address them. Despite the range of economic, fiscal, social, and environmental problems on our horizon, over the past year, nearly the only bills that Congress and the president have managed to pass have named post offices, shuffled public land ownership, or extended expiring (or better yet, already expired) statutes.
