January 31, 2018

U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Senator,

On January 23, 2018, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) introduced S. 2330, the Earmark Elimination Act, a bipartisan bill that would make permanent the 2010 earmark moratorium. On behalf of the more than one million members and supporters of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), I urge you to support this legislation.

Earmarks are corrupt, inequitable, and wasteful. They circumvent the authorization and appropriations process, while heavily skewing the distribution of those funds to those with the most power.

Senate Republicans understood this when they unanimously agreed to extend the earmark moratorium on January 10, 2017. S. 2330 is the appropriate next step to curtail this type of wasteful spending by making the earmark moratorium permanent.

Under Senate rules, an earmark can be removed from a bill by a point of order only if the earmark has not been publicly disclosed for at least 48 hours. Senate rules also allow an earmark to clear a point of order with a 60-vote threshold. S. 2330 would permanently ban congressional earmarks by creating a point of order that, when raised, would strike any provision in a bill that contains an earmark of any sort and could only be waived with an increased two-thirds threshold.

The Earmark Elimination Act makes certain that earmarks for teapot museums, indoor rainforests, and bridges to nowhere will be permanently prohibited. CCAGW endorses S. 2330 and urges all Senators to support this legislation.

Sincerely,

Tom Schatz
President, CCAGW

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