Congressman Jim Cooper wants a bipartisan commission to look at earmark funding and no-bid contracts. The Nashville Democrat says both practices raise questions of cronyism and unchecked federal spending.
Some legislators, including Cooper and Brentwood Republican Marsha Blackburn, have pledged not to make any earmark requests for next year’s budget. Others, like Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, say they’d be willing to stop using earmarks only if everyone else does, too. Without an across the board moratorium, Alexander says he’s not willing to forgo funding items like repairs to the Cumberland River’s Wolf Creek Dam. But Cooper says the fact that the work on the dam is funded via earmarks is a prime example of the need for reform.
“Should it take a senior republican on the appropriations committee to get money for a necessary national project like that? No! This is one of the essential functions of government is to keep us safe. That shows how government has been degraded that you think you have to have a side-pocket earmark expenditure to fix a leaky dam.”
Cooper’s bill to create a commission sets a six month deadline for recommendations, and gives Congress sixty days to turn that advice into legislation.
The measure is very similar to another of Cooper’s bills, which would create a panel to examine the national deficit.
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