{"id":3008,"date":"2007-09-09T07:07:49","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T07:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3008"},"modified":"2007-09-09T07:07:49","modified_gmt":"2007-09-09T07:07:49","slug":"parsing_earmark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3008","title":{"rendered":"Parsing Earmarks with Our Entrenched Political Class: David Obey&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/09\/08\/AR2007090801773.html?referrer=emailarticle\">John Solomon &#038; Jeffrey Birnbaum<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) confronted David R. Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, on the House floor in March over this practice, noting that a spending bill then under debate contained $35 million for a risk-mitigation program at a federal space-exploration facility, even though the measure had been certified to contain no earmarks.<br \/>\n&#8220;We have passed some good rules with regard to earmark reform and transparency,&#8221; Flake said. &#8220;But we have found a way around them already.&#8221; Obey said that the provision was not an earmark under the rules. &#8220;An earmark is something that is requested by an individual member,&#8221; Obey said. &#8220;This item was not requested by any individual member; it was put in the bill by me.&#8221;<br \/>\nTwo months later, Obey again rebuffed Flake when Flake pointed out that a supposedly earmark-free bill on the House floor contained an allocation of $8.7 million to ward off floods in New York. The provision was not called an earmark, Flake noted, but Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) put out a news release applauding the provision and its potential benefit to her district.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Much more on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/cgi-bin\/mt\/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&#038;search=earmarks\">earmarks, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Solomon &#038; Jeffrey Birnbaum: Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) confronted David R. Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, on the House floor in March over this practice, noting that a spending bill then under debate contained $35 million for a risk-mitigation program at a federal space-exploration facility, even though the measure had been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}