Earmark Reform?

The Senate just passed a bill which is intended to make our representatives in Washington more honest by forcing them to disclose all earmarks to the public. It sounded good to me, at first, but some people have been skeptical.

Including Porkbusters, I think the Porkbusters group is great and on their website they list the claims of the skeptics, which include the following:

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)

“There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in the new ethics bill...Senator Reid has given himself and a few committee chairmen the authority to determine whether congressional earmarks have been properly disclosed to the public...[t]his bill allows the fox to guard the henhouse and makes a joke of ethics reform.”

Sounds scary. If he is telling the truth, it puts too much power in the hands of one person who can allow earmarks a certain amount of invisibility. That's not good. However, it might be a step in the right direction. That's good; we'll have to keep an eye on this.

It's not a good enough bill to make me sleep better at night when I think about Washington wasting money.