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In tough times, bill would rein in spending waste

In these tough economic times, as Congress works with the president-elect on a stimulus package, we need a lot of things—cooperation between the political parties, for instance, and a determination to buckle down and come up with the right approach to boosting our economy. There’s also something we don’t need—wasteful spending on pet projects that members of Congress may try to sneak into the stimulus bill.

These projects, known as earmarks, are an abuse of taxpayer money, something we can’t afford as we work to get our economy back on track.

We have made some progress in reforming earmarks in Congress, most notably in the Honest Leadership in Government Act, which was signed into law last September and included a number of provisions I championed with then-Sen. Barack Obama. But we have to do more; we shouldn’t just disclose earmarks, we should make it harder to pass them, and John McCain and I have joined forces on a new proposal that would do just that.

The Fiscal Discipline, Earmark Reform, and Accountability Act of 2009 will move beyond discouraging earmarks to actually making it harder to enact them in the first place. Our proposal would allow any senator to strike an unauthorized pet project from a spending bill, unless 60 senators vote to keep the earmark in the bill. Most of these projects don’t have that kind of support in the Senate, which is why members sneak them into legislation in the first place. That’s why forcing these projects to get 60 votes will stop most earmarks in their tracks.

When we introduced the bill, Sen. McCain outlined just a few pet projects that have been tucked into larger bills in recent years. They included $188,000 in spending for something called the Lobster Institute, a cooperative program of research and education with the lobster industry at the University of Maine. Some of the Lobster Institute’s work includes a “Lobster Cam,” which features a lobster trap at the bottom of the ocean with a camera in it, and creation of a new lobster dog biscuit. Other projects are just as wasteful, such as the $125,000 spent on an International Mother’s Day Shrine in Grafton, W.Va.; and funding for a maritime museum in Mobile, Ala.

President-elect Obama was absolutely right recently when he said that he expected the economic recovery bill to be free of earmarks. The best way to keep that bill and other spending bills free of earmarks is to pass the reforms that Sen. McCain and I, along with other members from both parties, are proposing. That is why we plan to offer these reforms as an amendment to the economic recovery bill when it is considered in the Senate.

With the economic challenges we face, it’s more important than ever that we rein in wasteful spending, and that’s what we plan to do as we move this tough new proposal through Congress.

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., is a Janesville native. He can be reached at: 506 Hart Building, Washington, D.C. 20510-4904; phone (202) 224-5323; send e-mails to russell_feingold@feingold.senate.gov.