Cooper, Corker Call for Earmark Moratorium

Two members of Tennessee’s Congressional Delegation are throwing their support behind a one-year moratorium on earmark spending.

Earmarks are added to bills as a way of funneling federal money to specific state and local projects. Critics say few legislators bother to examine the funding requests, so they pass with little scrutiny.

Republican Senator Bob Corker says earmarks are wasteful and irresponsible. He’s one of fourteen Senators co-sponsoring an amendment that would suspend the current earmark process for a year. Earmarks could still be passed during that time, but it would take two-thirds majority approval for the Senate to even consider a bill that included them.

In the House, Representative Jim Cooper is pledging to go even farther. The Nashville Democrat supports the moratorium and another bill that would create a bipartisan review of spending projects. On top of that, Cooper says he won’t make any earmark requests at all in next year’s budget.

The move for a moratorium emerged in the wake of this year’s State of the Union Address. In it, President Bush threatened to veto any bill that doesn’t cut earmarks in half and ignore spending measures that haven’t been scrutinized by Congress.