Robert Novak’s latest column repeats, more or less, the information we heard originally from Mark Tapscott — that fear of offending congressional appropriators led the White House to derail OMB’s release of the earmark database OMB announced on January 25, 2007. We’ve been hearing a very different tale from the Office of Management and Budget, one which I think is rather plausible, as to why they haven’t released the whole database. Appropriators are a relatively limited pool of members–it may well be worth the effort to start calling each of their offices and asking their member to go on the record, either supporting or opposing, OMB’s effort to provide greater transparency to the federal budget through its disclosure of earmarks, to determine whether they were offended. That still might not answer the question of why OMB delayed the database to everyone’s satisfaction, but it would let appropriators know that we’re watching them too…

More on this later…