Lawmaker's mission: Put a bug in their earmarks

washington -- When Rep. Jeff Flake rises to speak in the House of Representatives, his colleagues grimace.

Usually, the Arizona Republican is out to shame them over earmarking money for pet projects that have little to do with federal priorities.

The House's No. 1 earmark-hater spares no one: not fellow Republicans, not committee chairs, not Arizona colleagues, not even Punxsutawney Phil.

A $100,000 earmark for the Punxsutawney Weather Discovery Center in Pennsylvania, home of the celebrated weather-predicting groundhog, was among the scores of projects Flake has derided as pork.

Flake is one of a handful of lawmakers -- including Sen. John McCain, a presidential candidate and fellow Arizona Republican -- who rail against pork-barrel spending. But Flake is perhaps the peskiest.

Repeatedly, he has tried to kill projects. And always, he failed -- until recently.

Flake finally notched his first kill: a $129,000 earmark for the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree, a North Carolina program that creates jobs for artisans. "I am prepared after this amendment to answer to the name Grinch," he said.

Yet his victory was almost undetectable.

Thousands of earmarks worth millions of dollars still cling to this year's spending bills like barnacles. But partly as a result of Flake's relentless nagging -- not to mention recent earmarking scandals -- congressional leaders have pledged to reduce the number of earmarks and open the process to more public scrutiny.

Flake's gripe is that projects are slipped into bills, often at a lobbyist's behest, without much, if any, public justification. "The earmarking process is fraught with a lack of transparency, fiscal responsibility and equity for taxpayers," he said, "all too often rewarding the districts of powerful members of Congress in the Appropriations Committee at the expense of the rest of the body."

Flake's persistence may be starting to pay off.

Last year, his amendments to strike earmarks drew an average of 68 votes. This year, the average rose to 85 votes.

"A lot of people are really sick of this game," Flake said. "They had higher aspirations than to beg for crumbs that fall from appropriators' tables."

First elected to the House in 2000, Flake is a blond 44-year-old with a Beach Boys look. One of 11 children, he was raised on a ranch in the Arizona town of Snowflake (named in part after his great-great-grandfather, one of two founders). He jokes that he went into politics "to get off the farm, quit milking cows."