A New Call for Earmark Reform

President George W. Bush

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Bush:

We commend you for renewing your commitment to earmark reform in your State of the Union Address and we share your hope that Congress will continue to make progress on this issue.  There are also important actions that you can take as head of the executive branch to curtail earmarking.

As you know, H.J.Res. 20, the FY2007 omnibus continuing resolution, was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Jan. 31, 2007.  The spending bill reportedly does not contain any new earmarks, although it does allow for the continued funding of ongoing earmarks. 

The resolution also requires each federal agency to submit account level details and justifications for how its appropriated funding will be spent in the remainder of fiscal year 2007.  We are concerned that this process will create an opportunity for Members of Congress to influence agencies to fund favored projects, perhaps using implicit threats to withhold future funding.

In the spirit of earmark reform and to prevent any appearance of impropriety, we urge you to commit each agency to refrain from including any grants or awards not based on a competitive bidding or formula-driven process in their spending plans.  In addition, we urge you to make all agency budget justification documents publicly available on the Internet within 24 hours of submission.  The American people deserve to know how these agencies plan to spend their hard-earned tax dollars.  These budget justifications should no longer be the sole purview of the Appropriations Committees. 

H.J.Res 20 also calls on you to ignore non-binding committee report earmarks by confirming explicitly that they do not carry the weight of law. We join Congress in urging you to take this step.  Mandates in conference reports do not meet the presentment clause of the Constitution—they are not law and can be ignored. The 1974 Budget Act requires that funds are spent on the accounts for which they are appropriated, but not on specific earmarks contained in committee reports.  H.J.Res 20 makes clear that Congress would welcome executive action to ignore these non-binding earmarks.

Sincerely,

Tim Phillips

President

Americans for Prosperity

Grover Norquist

President

Americans for Tax Reform

John Berthoud

President

National Taxpayers Union

Mallory Factor

President

Free Enterprise Fund

Tom Schatz

President

Council for Citizens Against Government Waste

Jim Martin

President

60 Plus Association

Matt Kibbe

President

FreedomWorks

David N. Bossie

President

Citizens United

J. William Lauderback

Executive Vice President

American Conservative Union

Daniel Clifton

Executive Director

American Shareholders Association

Doug Bandow

Vice President for Policy

Citizen Outreach  Project

Geoffrey Segal

Director of Government Reform

Reason Foundation

Cc: Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns

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