July 27, 2010

House overwhelmingly passes Markey's bill to rescind transportation earmarks

Courtesy of the Coloradoan, July 27, 2010, by Robert Moore 

A bill to rescind hundreds of millions of dollars in unspent transportation earmarks won easy approval from the House today, giving Rep. Betsy Markey a legislative triumph.

The House voted 394-23 in favor of the bill. Senate prospects for the bill are uncertain.

Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., praised the bill but also urged House members to act like fiscal conservatives on new earmarks about to come to a vote.

"I think we recognize there are a lot of earmarks that go through this place that are never funded and that's usually a good thing because often they are quite wasteful," said Flake, who has been one of the leading congressional critics of earmarks, which are legislative directions to fund specific projects. "This bill also shines a spotlight on wasteful transportation earmarks in a number of bills and it rescinds more than $8 million in contract authority for SAFETEA-LU, which we passed a few years ago."

But Flake also challenged the House over a new transportation funding bill they'll take up later this week.

"We can't simply say, all right, we're for fiscal responsibility when we're rescinding earmark moneys that haven't been spent and then a couple of days later approve a bill with more than 500 earmarks worth about $300 million that will take effect now," he said.

Markey's bill would rescind about $713 million in unspent transportation earmarks, some of which are more than two decades old.