Senate panel agrees to disclose earmarks in Defense bill

The Senate Armed Services Committee has taken a hard line on earmarks, agreeing to fully disclose add-ons for pet projects tucked into annual defense authorization measures.

Senate Armed Services ranking member John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., sponsored disclosure language during a closed-door markup of the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill last week.

Committee and conference reports on the bill must list the name of the sponsor and the intended location of the program for any projects not requested by the Bush administration in either annual or supplemental spending requests and not listed on the military services' unfunded requirements lists, according to a copy of the language posted on the Project on Government Oversight Web site and verified by Senate aides.

"These requests, which are so often done in secret and without any sort of public scrutiny, are sending the federal budget and our national deficit through the roof," McCaskill, a former state auditor, said in a prepared statement. "No project should be funded with taxpayer dollars without close examination."

The language requires the information be provided "by electronic means easily accessible by the public" at least 48 hours before consideration of the bill or the final conference report.

"As stewards of taxpayers' dollars, it is our duty to spend the people's money responsibly, and to do it in an open and honest fashion," McCain said in a separate statement. "I am pleased that the committee has accepted that responsibility." The House's version of the defense authorization bill, which passed earlier this month, does not include earmark disclosure language.

The McCain-McCaskill language acknowledges that the panel "does not have a complete database" with the location and intended recipients of all the earmarks in the authorization bill. But the committee does plan to collect all of that information from members and provide it in the conference report on the fiscal 2008 authorization bill, the language says.

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., wrote a memo last month saying that senators requesting earmarks in the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill must disclose their backing for a project, name and location of its intended recipient, and the purpose of the earmarks.

The McCain-McCaskill language makes clear that disclosing the intended recipient of each earmark does not require the funding to be directed to a specific company.

"The committee intends that the Department [of Defense] comply with all applicable competitive and merit-based procedures," the language says. Also, the language says the disclosure requirements do not extend to any funding lawmakers might add to the amounts requested by the Bush administration for military construction projects and for pay, bonuses or other benefits to military personnel and their families.