Senate Republicans on Tuesday voted to impose a two-year ban on earmarks used to fund lawmakers’ pet projects, hoping to send a signal to angry voters that Republicans are serious about cutting government spending and shrinking the nation’s staggering deficit.
Not one senator spoke in opposition to the moratorium during Republicans’ closed-door meeting, though earmarks have been a point of contention between GOP leaders and incoming lawmakers who insist that voters who ousted Democrats in record numbers on Nov. 2 are demanding that Congress rein in federal spending.
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“I think it shows that this conference is serious about doing what it said we were going to be about, which is limited government, spending reduction and dealing with the national debt,” said Sen.-elect Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who ran as a Tea Party candidate and pledged to do away with earmarks.
The vote to ban earmarks, funding for pet projects that lawmakers slip into appropriations bills without public input, marks a dramatic turnaround for the Senate GOP, whose leaders were still defending the use of earmarks until very recently.
One of the staunchest defenders of earmarks, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has steered millions of dollars to his state for special projects, reversed course Monday and declared that he now opposes them. McConnell’s change of attitude came after a half-dozen newly elected GOP senators pressed their case for a ban.
The freshmen “sent a signal to every Republican in our conference that if we are really listening to the American people, we had better show them with this vote,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., one of the GOP’s most vocal opponents of earmarks.
McConnell, according to those in the room, addressed the conference before the vote, telling Republicans, “Listen to the people that elected us and be held accountable for the things we ran on.”
The resolution is not binding, which means Republicans can continue to use earmarks. Some are expected to do just that, especially lawmakers from states that rely heavily on federal funding.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who has defended the use of earmarks to funnel millions of dollars to his state, left the meeting early. “I support what our committees do, what we should be doing and what we have been doing in the past,” Inhofe told The Washington Examiner, declining to say whether he backed the ban.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the Senate Republican Policy Committee chairman, acknowledged that senators cannot be forced to follow the moratorium.
“I think it was overwhelmingly supported so I think it expresses the very strong sentiment of the conference,” Thune said. “I would expect members to adhere to it.”
While few Senate Democrats back a ban on earmarks, they may be forced to vote soon on whether to impose a moratorium.
Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who are co-sponsoring the earmark ban, want to attach it to legislation that will be taken up during the current lame-duck session. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has not committed to bring it up for a vote.
