On Nov. 19, 2008, House GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor created a select committee on earmark reform to bring “meaningful change to the process by which Washington spends taxpayers’ hard-earned money.”

 

Nearly a year later, the committee has done virtually nothing about earmarks — except to request more of them.

 

When Boehner and Cantor announced the creation of the committee last November, they proposed that Republicans in the House refrain from requesting any additional earmarks until the committee reported back with its recommendations for reform.

 

That report was to be delivered “no later than Feb. 16, 2009,” but it still hasn’t come. While a Republican aide said earlier this month that the report is a “work in progress,” committee members acknowledge that they haven’t met once since their February deadline came and went.

 

In the meantime, the vast majority of House Republicans — including eight of the 10 on the committee — have continued to seek earmarks.

 

Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) has requested roughly $129 million in earmarks so far this year. Her staff defended her panel’s work, saying it has “inspired” a GOP website that lists all members’ earmark requests and also inspired “the  Republican transparency initiative” that is being pushed now on Capitol Hill.

 

But McMorris Rodgers’ staff and committee could not identify a single reform recommended by the group. Nor could earmark critic Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), another member of the committee.

 

Asked about the committee’s progress so far, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) looked at the ground and smirked.

 

“[The lack of progress is] disappointing, certainly disappointing,” said Flake, a member of the committee and one of the most vocal critics of earmarks in Congress. “We haven’t offered any more comprehensive reform to earmarks.”

 

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana told POLITICO on Tuesday that the panel is doing “good work.” Informed that the committee missed a February deadline and hasn’t met since then, Pence said he’d have to “plead ignorance” because he is not on the committee, adding that the “American people are ahead of most members of Congress” on the issue and that Republicans are “much more prepared” to deal with it than Democrats.

 

Earmarks have been a staple of the budget process for decades, but there has been increasing pressure in the past decade to seriously reform the process by which members request funds in spending bills. Upon taking power of Congress in 2006, Democrats forced members to post their earmark requests on the Internet before they could be considered by appropriations committees.

 

But critics say there’s still much to be done. For example, lawmakers can still request earmarks for campaign donors, as at least one member of the earmark reform panel — Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) — has done this year.

 

Ethics investigators and the Department of Justice have looked at the connection between lobbyists’ donations and earmarks directed toward their clients, most recently in the case of earmarks requested by members of the House Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee on behalf of clients of the now-defunct PMA Group.

 

Among the committee’s members, only Flake and Hensarling have refrained from seeking earmarks this year. The other eight members — McMorris Rodgers, Hastings and Reps. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), Kevin Brady (R-Texas), Randy Forbes (R-Va.), John Mica (R-Fla.), Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) and Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) — have all requested earmarks.

 

In announcing the select committee in November, Boehner castigated Democrats for not doing more to curb earmark abuses. Cantor called the status quo “simply not acceptable.”

 

“It’s now or never to start making Washington work again for the hardworking American families, and this commission is a step forward into the right direction,” Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said in a press release distributed by Boehner’s office.

 

Boehner and Cantor’s office declined to comment for this story. The two GOP leaders invited Democrats to join a bipartisan earmark committee, but they declined to do so. And some Republicans say it’s been hard to move forward on reforms alone.

 

“We tried to do it ourselves, without Democrats, so it was tough,” said Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), an outspoken transparency and ethics advocate.

 

Still, Reichert — who is not a member of the committee — said he’s “absolutely disappointed” by its lack of progress. Because of the House’s overall inaction on actual earmark reform, Reichert said he’s had to take steps to reform the process himself. He said he visits all earmark requesters in his home district before submitting the spending item to the Appropriations Committee.

 

Flake said he’s frustrated that yet another appropriations season has passed without further reform from either side of the aisle. For the Arizona Republican, there’s now only one option — but it’s one that’s not likely to be taken.