Closing the Earmark Disclosure Loopholes

by

It won’t save our intrepid band of earmark hunters from staying up all night looking for earmark requests on member Web sites, but Rep. Bill Cassidy and Rep. Jackie Speier announced today a resolution that, if passed, would require much more robust online disclosure of earmarks, both from members and (my favorite) from the committees themselves. The new rules would make working with earmark data easier by “requiring any Committee accepting earmark requests to maintain a searchable online database of Members’ earmark requests.” (emphasis added). This would bring some uniformity to the way different committees — Transporation, we’re looking at you — require disclosure of earmark requests. As we burn the midnight oil tonight, we’ll be pulling for this resolution.