Getting an Earful about Earmarks

President Obama signed the $410 billion federal budget this week, calling the bill "imperfect" for the billions in earmarks it included. Earmarks, those expensive pet-projects of lawmakers that get tucked into big bills, are something Obama promised to do away with during his campaign for the presidency.

"I am signing an imperfect omnibus bill because it's necessary for the ongoing functions of government," Obama acknowledged in a recent press conference. "But I also view this as a departure point for more far-reaching change."

Administration officials indicated that the change would come in scrutinizing future legislation. As earmarks became center stage during the 2008 campaign for both Republicans and Democrats, reforms had already begun on the process of making earmarks and who sponsors them public.

House Democrats took that reform even further this week, outlining steps to be taken by the House Appropriations Committee. Every earmark will have to be submitted to the appropriate executive branch user for a review. Earmarks designed to benefit for-profit companies would have to be awarded through competitive bidding.

President Obama also promises to bring back the rarely used process by which the president can cut spending from bills that he has signed into law. This process is called rescissions and allows the president to send Congress a list of spending cuts to be considered. Congress can ignore the list, but the hope is that it will be a jumping off point for controlling earmark spending.

But for now there is a new budget that included nearly 8000 earmarks. The Associated Press listed some of those pet programs as a 1.2 million program to provide eye care to poor students through Helen Keller International and a $485,000 boarding school for native students in Alaska. All together the earmarks were more than $12 billion of the $410 billion budget.

The budget itself represented a nearly 8% increase in spending for 2009. Adding to the billions already being spent through the previously approved economic stimulus package, the budget breaks down as follows:

$152.3 billion Labor/Health/Education
$57.7 billion Commerce/Justice
$54.9 billion Transportation/Housing and Urban Development
$36.6 billion State/Foreign Operations
$33.3 billion Engery and Water
$27.6 billion Interior/Environment
$22.7 billion Financial Services
$20.5 billion Agriculture
$4.4 billion Legislative Branch

This huge 1,132-page bill is really nine spending bills that fund the annual operating budgets of every Cabinet department except Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs. It includes aid to foreign countries and increases in aid to the poor and spending on energy. This is actually a budget started under President George W. Bush, but failed to be signed into law as both parties avoided the election year budget battle.

Texas Senators, Republicans Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, expressed their disappointment in the bill, citing excessive spending. Both senators said the bill was out of step with the needs of the American people and represented unprecedented levels of government spending. The budget did not sail smoothly through either house of Congress, with members of both parties voting against it.

Ki lives in central Texas and works in the Austin real estate market. His site provides potential homebuyers a search of the Austin MLS. He also provides detailed information about Austin real estate and Barton Creek real estate on his site.