{"id":34511,"date":"2016-11-17T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T17:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/ryan-pulls-plug-on-house-gop-bid-to-restore-earmarks\/"},"modified":"2016-11-17T09:00:40","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T17:00:40","slug":"ryan-pulls-plug-on-house-gop-bid-to-restore-earmarks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/ryan-pulls-plug-on-house-gop-bid-to-restore-earmarks\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan pulls plug on House GOP bid to restore earmarks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>WASHINGTON \u2014<\/strong> House Republican leaders on Wednesday halted a bid by some GOP lawmakers to restore earmarks, those congressional directives that steer funds to specific projects back home.<\/p>\n<p>Republican lawmakers were discussing the plan at a closed-door meeting when Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the plug, saying the issue should be debated in public. Ryan promised to revisit the issue early next year.<\/p>\n<p>Former Speaker John Boehner imposed a moratorium on earmarks several years ago after they became associated with corruption and boondoggle projects such as Alaska\u2019s \u201cBridge to Nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said he supports efforts to revisit earmarks \u2014 with more openness and clearly defined rules \u2014 but said the timing was off.<\/p>\n<p>Voters chose President-elect Donald Trump in part because of his pledge to \u201cdrain the swamp\u201d of Washington corruption, and restoring earmarks so soon \u201cwould have been a bad look,\u201d Simpson said.<\/p>\n<p>Still, Simpson and other lawmakers defended earmarks, saying the five-year-old moratorium has given power to \u201cunelected bureaucrats\u201d in the executive branch who now decide whether projects important to local districts are built.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a sentiment that we\u2019ve given away too much of our own power to the executive branch,\u201d said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a seven-term veteran and ally of both Boehner and Ryan.<\/p>\n<p>Asked about Trump\u2019s pledge to \u201cdrain the swamp,\u201d Cole replied that the swamp \u201cmust be in the executive branch,\u201d because voters \u201cdidn\u2019t change much in the legislative branch,\u201d where Republicans maintained control of both chambers.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the third-ranking House Republican, said that under President Barack Obama, executive-branch officials \u201care writing rules and regulations that are having a negative impact on our economy. It\u2019s time to restore that balance and frankly return that power to the people of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 House Republican leaders on Wednesday halted a bid by some GOP lawmakers to restore earmarks, those congressional directives that steer funds to specific projects back home. Republican lawmakers were discussing the plan at a closed-door meeting when Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the plug, saying the issue should be debated in public. Ryan promised [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34511"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}