September 14th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
The House of Representatives passed H.R. 1000, a new rule that requires that bills considered before Congress must list all earmarks in a bill and the names of the Members who requested them, no matter what committee the bill came out of. This is good news, as the elimination of mystery spending is a step in getting rid of unnecessary spending.
Here are the votes from Ohio’s Representatives:
John Boehner (R) - Yes
Sherrod Brown (D) - Yes
Steve Chabot (R) - Yes
David Hobson (R) - No (What gives?)
Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D) - No
Marcy Kaptur (D) - No
Dennis Kucinich (D) - No
Steven C. LaTourette (R) - Yes
Robert Ney (R) - Did Not Vote
Michael Oxley (R) - Yes
Deborah Pryce (R) - Yes
Ralph Regula (R) - No (Huh?)
Tim Ryan (D) - No
Jean Schmidt (R) - Yes
Ted Strickland (D) - Did Not Vote
Pat Tiberi (R) - Yes
Michael Turner (R) - Yes
Representatives Hobson and Regula haven’t mentioned the bill yet on their House sites. Congressman Strickland is likely avoiding cannon fodder in his gubernatorial campaign. Congressman Ney is being investigated for corruption (but not charged at this time) and has ended his campaign for reelection in November, so a “Yes” vote may seem hypocritical. 
A “No” vote by Congressman Brown would have given Senator DeWine something else to hit Brown with in the Senate campaign.
October 11th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
[...] Robert Novak reports in Human Events that despite the earmark transparency reform passed by the House, earmarks can still be hidden in the federal budget. In a caucus of Republican senators, 82-year-old, six-term Sen. Ted Stevens charged that freshman Sen. Tom Coburn’s anti-pork crusade hurts the party. Stevens then removed from the final version of the Defense Department appropriations bill Coburn’s “report card” requiring the Pentagon to grade earmarks. The House passed, 394 to 22, the bill, stripped of this reform and containing some 2,800 earmarks worth $11 billion. That made a mockery of a “transparency” rule passed by the House earlier this year, supposedly intended to discourage earmarks. [...]