This morning, Senate Appropriations chair Robert Byrd (D-WV) announced that his committee would immediately adopt the earmark disclosure rules advocated by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) in S. Res. 123 that we reported on last week. Under the new committee rules,

• all earmarks in appropriations bills and reports would be identified, with the amount, the sponsor and the recipient of the earmark; the committee bill and report will be published on the Internet
• earmarks would be defined as any legislative provision or report language that authorizes or recommends a specific amount of discretionary budget authority for any entity, whether a federal agency or a private organization
• Senators would have to certify that neither they nor their spouses have any financial interest in the earmark

Sen. DeMint said, "There's no reason at all we shouldn't adopt this rule as a Senate rule... "[Without a Senate] rule, we have no authority to call [Byrd] to account. We have no leverage here." Democratic leaders say they aren't pre-empting DeMint, but urging him and his GOP supporters to wait for the lobbying bill -- which includes the DeMint proposal adopted unanimously by the Senate -- to pass the House, get signed by the president, and become law. An open question: is this the completion of the "reform process" sufficient for Sen. Byrd to lift his "moratorium on all earmarks"?