(Washington, D.C.) – The nation’s premier taxpayer watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), expressed support for President-elect Obama’s goals to increase transparency and accountability in the executive branch and encouraged him to stand firm on his promise not to allow Congress to festoon the impending stimulus package with pork-barrel projects.

The President-elect stated at a press conference on Tuesday, January 6 that he intends to include three oversight provisions in the stimulus bill to ensure that the hundreds of billions of dollars are spent wisely, including the establishment of a special monitor to oversee the expenditures, a Web site to allow taxpayers to follow the money themselves, and a prohibition on the inclusion of congressional earmarks.

“Mr. Obama’s rhetoric is very encouraging.  However, he will be inheriting a congressional budgeting system that promotes excessive spending and which has proved challenging to prior Presidential efforts at reform,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “His efforts to lay down a marker on congressional earmarking in the stimulus bill deserve the taxpayers’ support.”

Roll Call reported on January 6 that the House and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairmen David Obey (D-Wisc.) and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) announced that starting with the fiscal year 2010 budget cycle, they plan to curb earmarking and take additional steps to make those spending items more transparent to taxpayers by requiring members of Congress to post their earmark requests on their websites with more detailed explanations of the requests.  The two also said they plan to make earmark disclosure tables available during subcommittee markups rather than after the full committee markups.

“While the chairmen are now willing to give taxpayers a look behind the screen at how the sausage is made, more reforms are necessary, such as those being proposed today by Senators McCain (R-Ariz.), Feingold (D-Wisc.), Coburn (R-Okla.) and McCaskill (D-Mo.).  The problem with earmarks will not be solved by setting a random figure as the floor for such spending.  Congressional earmarks continue to be wasteful, narrowly-focused giveaways which tend to benefit politically-connected special interests.  Unless that $10 billion is fully reintegrated into the merit-based budget process, there will continue to be potential pay-to-play schemes going on.  President-elect Obama is right:  budget reform must stop being a meaningless rhetorical flourish and become a reality and it must include the elimination of congressional earmarking.” 

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.