Lawmakers aligned with the tea party are moving quickly to show their strength by trying to ban budget earmarking in the Senate, where support is still strong for the practice critics deride as pork-barrel spending.
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint on Monday was collecting signatures on a letter calling for a vote by his fellow Senate Republicans to ban earmarks, in which spending is channeled to projects favored by individual lawmakers, outside the competitive federal funding system.
House Republicans and President Barack Obama have endorsed such a ban, and a wave of Republicans who oppose earmarks were elected to the Senate last week. But Mr. DeMint’s move puts him at odds with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who has defended earmarking as a legitimate exercise of Congress’s power of the purse.
The face-off looms as one of many tests of Republican leaders’ ability to manage the demands of tea-party activists.
House GOP leaders want to promote Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas) to a leadership post but unexpectedly face a challenge from Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R., Minn.), founder of the House Tea Party Caucus.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703957804575602930038132758.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLETopStories
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