New House Majority Leader and 'Earmarks'

House Republicans chose a new Majority Leader, John Boehner, in a effort toward initiating reforms to move beyond recent congressional scandals.

One of the issues Mr. Boehner and the Congress will face is the question of 'earmarks', which now divert billions of dollars from federal agencies' primary missions toward projects designed to benefit individual congressional districts. The federal government is struggling with severe budget pressures, so it should be a priority to see that those dollars are spent on the purposes for which they were intended.

For just one example, the Fiscal Year 2006 NASA budget contains $321 million in earmarks. Now, some of these items probably do happen to contribute to NASA's core missions, and even serious reform probably won't end the practice of earmarks entirely. But suppose that $321 million could be focused on one or more of NASA's key efforts over 2 to 3 years. That amount of funding would probably cover a significant part of the cost of a final Shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Or it could provide for one or more robotic missions to the Moon or elsewhere in the inner solar system. This amount of money could also accelerate NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and Centennial Challenges efforts to stimulate commercial space activity in support of NASA's goals.