Brown Attacks Pork-Barrel on Several Fronts

House science committee chairman George Brown (D-California) and the members of his committee have taken several actions recently to reduce the practice of earmarking, or pork-barreling, in the budget process. As chair of an authorizing committee (which approves programs), Brown has been an active opponent of earmarking, in which appropriators (who provide funding) ignore authorizing legislation and target funds for specific projects in their state or district-- projects that have usually not undergone competitive peer review. Funds for these projects are often inserted into the reports that accompany appropriations bills. While the reports are not voted on, nor legally binding, most agencies obey them for fear that otherwise, disgruntled appropriators will cut their budgets the following year. According to Brown, “Because this pork is found only in the report, it is not open to debate on the floor. This circumvents the right of the great majority of the House and Senate to have a voice in determining the expenditure of public funds.”

One recent strike against pork occurred in the NSF reauthorization bill (H.R. 3254), which was approved by the science committee on March 23. Along with providing $150 million for academic facility improvement awards in fiscal year 1995, the bill specifies that institutions which seek out future earmarks from their appropriators will be disqualified from competing for the NSF facility grants. The House floor is scheduled to begin consideration of the NSF reauthorization bill on May 3.

Brown also recently appeared before a subcommittee of the House Rules Committee to discuss proposed rule changes that might help redress what he called “the imbalance of power” between authorizers and appropriators. On March 16, Brown testified on recommendations made by the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, which was formed to consider congressional reforms. While Brown supported many of the committee’s suggestions as “important first steps,” he claimed that they did not go far enough. Specifically, he attacked the practice of including legislation or policy provisions in appropriations bills and the accompanying reports. (Writing legislative provisions into spending bills is illegal unless deemed otherwise by the House Rules Committee; appropriations bills are only supposed to provide funding, not dictate how it is to be used.) Brown advocated that the Rules Committee first obtain the consent of the relevant authorizing committee before allowing such provisions. Another proposal required a separate section in appropriations reports for unauthorized earmarks; Brown argued for amending the House rules to bar such provisions from reports just as they are barred from the bills themselves.

While Brown has claimed some success in reducing earmarks in the fiscal year 1993 appropriations for NSF, NASA, DOE and other science-related agencies, he continues to fight earmarks in the Defense Department’s Technology Reinvestment Program, which was designed by the Clinton Administration to competitively award grants to US industry for dual-use technologies. Brown’s science committee is currently contemplating issuing a subpoena to DOD for relevant documents.