The Rochester Post Bulletin's Ed Felker reports Local reaction to president's speech is mixed. The article contains Representative Walz's and Kline's reactions, but doesn't stop there.
Felker asked the director of Winona State University's National Child Protection Training Center what he thought about Bush's anti-earmark statements. The response is thoughtful:
Walz's guest at the speech was Victor Vieth, director of the Winona-based National Child Protection Training Center, which received a $1.2 million earmark in the 2008 appropriations cycle for an expanded training facility. That earmark was sought by Walz and Sens. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
Walz said in announcing his choice of Vieth to attend the speech that he wanted to draw attention to the center and "critical health and safety needs of America's children."
In an interview, Vieth said he considered the president's comments less directed at the center and more at "earmarks that don't serve a national purpose." He said the funding for the program enjoys bipartisan support and is the kind of earmark that he feels can withstand scrutiny. "I have no problem if we're part of legislation that would come to the floor. I'd think we do very well."
He added that last year, when Democrats deleted earmarks in 2007 appropriations bills in order to enact stalled bills left to them by the Republicans, the center applied to the Department of Justice for a $3 million grant. The center lost out to applicants ranked lower by the department's peer review process.
"In some sense, earmarks are more of an open process, as long as members attach their names to things and there's some level of process where there's scrutiny," Vieth said.
The Winona Daily News editorial board applauds the invitation in Vieth worthy of State of the Union invite:
The world is filled with unsung heroes.
Victor Vieth, and all of the staff affiliated with the National Child Protection Training Center, are unsung heroes. Every day, they work at protecting children through training others — hoping their efforts might be amplified by teaching those who work with children better techniques to keep kids safe. A single center in Winona has a nationwide effect.
Vieth has been the visionary and the soul of the program. While we know it has taken the efforts of an entire staff, support from Winona State University and support from legislators like Rep. Tim Walz, Sens. Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar, it has been Vieth who has become a tireless advocate for children. It should also be noted that former Rep. Gil Gutknecht was also a big supporter of the center.
It is an honor for the center to be here in Winona, and we thank the folks at it for making it a one-of-a-kind place.
On Thursday, Walz invited Vieth to attend President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address in Washington, D.C., last night. Walz said he wanted Vieth to meet other congressional leaders and share with them the work he’s doing.
How should the appropriations process be changed? Yesterday, we were reading an article in the Washington Post about President Bush "taking on" Congress about appropriations, Bush Challenges Congress on Earmarks, where we learned:
President Bush took on Congress today over its appetite for special spending projects, announcing a new strategy of vetoes and executive action to cut the number of so-called earmarks in half during his final year in office and to open the rest to more scrutiny and debate.
A spokeswoman, who previewed Bush's State of the Union address tonight, said the president has vowed to veto any spending bills for the 2009 fiscal year that do not cut the number of earmarks in half and said he will order agencies to ignore any projects listed in conference reports rather than in legislation.
This article got us to wondering. How would the earmarked appropriations that Tim Walz brought back to the First Congressional District fare under the President's new rules? First, a bit more of the details from the WaPo:
Lawmakers use earmarks to send money to their home districts for specific projects, often for construction and infrastructure, such as roads, pipelines and libraries. But some earmarks also secure lucrative federal contracts for home-district companies, and none of them go through a neutral process deciding national priorities.
A preliminary count last month by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks earmarks, found that Congress approved 11,145 earmarks worth $15.3 billion this year, although the White House has used higher estimates and Congress lower ones. By the time the counting is done, the group estimated that this year's earmarks would be about 25 percent less costly than the all-time high in 2005, when Republicans controlled Congress.
Beyond vetoing any spending bill later this year that does not cut such projects in its area by half, Bush also said he will sign an executive order tomorrow instructing agencies to disregard earmarks that are in conference committee reports that accompany bills and not in the language of actual legislation.
The vast majority of earmarks are included only in such reports. Although the earmarks have traditionally been honored, language in such reports is not legally binding, according to court decisions cited by the White House and some think tanks.
Lawmakers could get around this by including the projects in the legislative language or, in theory, by including language in the legislation that says the conference reports should be considered law. Perino said putting the projects into the spending bills themselves would allow more public scrutiny than a conference report, which is not subject to a vote on the floor.
Can Congressman Walz's earmarks withstand scrutiny?
We were guessing that just about all of Walz's successful earmarks fell into those categories, but thought we'd check with Walz's congressional staff. After a few inquiries, Walz spokester Meredith Salsbery said that four of the twenty earmarks requested by the congressman that were included in the Omnibus Spending Bill (Rules Committee text here) didn't face a House floor vote.
Two of them were $100,000 Homeland Security appropriations for flood-related efforts for St. Charles and Winona County; the August flood occurred after the vote had been taken on the Homeland Security funding bill in the House.
The other two were for a National Guard facility in Mankato and the Northern Tallgrass Prairie National Wildlife Refuge. The wildlife refuge earmark was also requested in the Senate by Senators Coleman and Klobuchar, as well as Iowa's Tom Harkin.
The largest earmark, $27 million for the Lewis & Clark Rural Water System, was requested in the House and Senate by a bi-partisan coalition of lawmakers from Iowa, South Dakota and Minnesota. After he released the list of earmarks he had requested, Walz's congressional office issued periodical press releases charting the progress of the requests through the legislative process.
Do all earmarks suddenly show up in conference committee reports? For southern Minnesota in the 110th Congress: not from the looks of it.
Now, what's so special about candidates who promise to sit out the process?
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