A while back, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington went to great lengths to preserve a $500,000 earmark for the Olympic Sculpture Park, a project of the Seattle Art Museum. What's surprising (to me at least) is the amount of money that the museum spent to win that $500,000 in federal funding. Adding up the figures reported to the Senate Office of Public Records between 2002 and 2005, I come up with a total of $220,000 worth of expenditures to lobby Congress. That almost seems like it's not worth the trouble, considering that the project altogether cost in the neighborhood of $85 million.
Continue readingDeLay Aide Rudy Pleads Guilty to Fraud:
Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s (R-TX) ex-deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy pleaded guilty to fraud charges stemming from “a bribery scheme that began in 1997 and ran through 2004,” according to Roll Call. The bribery scheme is the same one that brought Jack Abramoff and former DeLay spokesman Michael Scanlon to justice and has ensnared numerous members of Congress, most notably Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), who is mentioned in the plea deals of Abramoff, Scanlon, and now Rudy. While DeLay was not singled out in the Rudy plea his “single closest adviser” and former chief of staff Ed Buckham was implicated in the scheme. The majority of the actions noted in the Rudy plea occur from 2000-2002. Rudy’s actions from 1997 to 1999 are not detailed in the plea deal. The New York Daily News notes that the corruption probe is encircling DeLay. A “knowledgeable source” notes that Rudy and Buckham, “were Batman and Robin. Tony didn't do anything without Buckham's say-so. ... Buckham was Batman.”
Continue readingEarmark Reform Has Large Loophole:
Last week the Senate passed a lobbying and ethics reform bill that included reforms to the earmarking process that would require nonfederal earmarks to be made public 24 hours before a vote allow members to challenge any nonfederal earmark. The Kansas City Star notes that, “A mammoth loophole remains in that the restrictions would apply only to spending on ‘nonfederal’ projects: ones for local or state government or other nonfederal administrators, such as a museum or Indian tribe. Earmarks for federal agencies would not be affected.” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who voted against the reform bill, is unimpressed by the earmarking reform: “We haven’t addressed the issue of earmarks, which has bred the lobbyists which has bred corruption. Earmarking is the genesis of all these egregious abuses.” McCain did state that there will be more opportunities for the Congress to enact more serious reform, “The good news is there will be more indictments, and I think we will be revisiting this issue, if not this year, the next year.”
Continue readingMore News:
- Jack Abramoff and Tony Rudy were involved in the 1998 gubernatorial election in Guam, according to the Guam Pacific Daily News:
In e-mails reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Abramoff had asked Tony Rudy, Rep. Tom DeLay's deputy chief of staff, to see if he could garner any assistance in helping the 1998 gubernatorial candidacy of former Gov. Joseph Ada and then Sen. Felix Camacho, now the governor of Guam, who ran against incumbent Gov. Carl Gutierrez at the time.
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The e-mail from Abramoff, sent Oct. 26, 1998, stated, “We want to know if there is any way to get Tom to call for an investigation of the misuse of federal funds on Guam by this governor,” referring to Gutierrez.
Abramoff then said he would draft a statement for DeLay and suggested that if Rudy could "issue a press release and letter requesting an Inspector General to investigate these matters, it should have a major impact on the election next week."
Within a few hours, the report states, Rudy and DeLay aide Tom Scanlon released a statement from DeLay and a letter to the Department of the Interior's inspector general, calling for a federal investigation of Gutierrez.
- Former Pennsylvania congressman and current lobbyist Robert Walker “dismissed lobbying reforms approved by the Senate as minimal and said they would ‘have little or no impact on the way Washington actually operates,’” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Walker states that three steps need to be taken to crack down on lobbying abuses, “Credentialing lobbyists, abolishing so-called leadership political-action committees, and barring contributions by lobbyists to individual campaigns.”
- The Toledo Blade reports that Ohio Senate candidate Rep. Sherrod Brown (D), “his family, and his staff accepted 57 privately funded trips, valued at nearly $180,000, in more than a decade in the House - including flights to Finland, Hong Kong, Hawaii, Israel, Moscow, and Taiwan.” Brown opposes a proposed travel ban pending as a part of lobbying and ethics reform.
- The San Francisco Chronicle reports on Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s fundraising: “If money is power in politics, then Nancy Pelosi wields a lot of it.” Pelosi’s ability to raise money has also brought investigations, predominantly by a conservative named Ken Boehm. Although he tried, Boehm “failed to uncover anything that looked like a legal violation or a bona fide scandal, and he eventually got distracted and moved on to researching somebody else.”
- It seems to me that we get one of these “ethics committee sidelined” stories per week. This time it’s from Roll Call, “The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct met for several hours on Thursday but in the end only reached one public decision — to continue an investigation of a leftover complaint from the 108th Congress against Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) for his leaking of an illegally intercepted phone call between Republican leaders in 1996.”
- The Washington Post reports that Maryland is having just as hard a time as Congress in regulating lobbying.
Depressing, Unless You’re an Incumbent…
Here’s today’s candidate for one of the 10 most overlooked bookmarks on OpenSecrets.org, the website that tracks money in federal elections: http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/stats.asp?cycle=2006&display=A&type=R This particular page will give you a glimpse into the amount of money members of Congress have already stockpiled for their 2006 reelection campaigns. If you were thinking of running for Congress this year, a warning: you may find this information frightening. Even if you’re not running, you may find it depressing – at least if you're a fan of competitive elections.
Continue readingBeta blues
I should add that this is day one of a three week test drive for this blog (and the rest of the Sunlight Foundation site), and there are still bugs to be worked out. One of the key ones is assuring that posts end up where they're supposed to go, and it's one we haven't seem to have mastered as of yet. But we'll get there...
Continue readingFirst thoughts
One can begin anywhere, but let's start with this thoughtful critique from Don Surber of Porkbusters, the online effort to identify and protest wasteful federal spending. Surber has two main objections, the first being (and I'm paraphrasing), that pork is sometimes good policy (a theme he elaborates on here), and the second, that such efforts amount to pin pricks:
What's that, Porkbusters found $23 billion in questionable spending? That is less than 1% of a $2.7 trillion budget.
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In Blog Daylight:
- One day after Jack Abramoff was sentenced to 70 months in prison House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “offered a privileged resolution today calling for an immediate investigation into Abramoff's ties to members of Congress and staffers,” according to The Fix’s Chris Cillizza. The resolution was defeated 216-193 with the vote coming largely along party lines. Six Republicans joined the Democrats in voting for the resolution, two more voted “present”, while the five Democrats on the ethics committee, “presumably to preserve them from accusations of bias as they continue to urge an investigation into ethics breaches of House members linked to Abramoff,” also voted “present.”
- Mark Tapscott at Tapscott’s Copy Desk was mighty excited about an amendment to the Senate lobbying reform legislation that was proposed by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Barack Obama (D-IL) yesterday:
The Coburn/OBama amendment directs the U.S. Office of Management and Budget to establish a publicly available database of the more than $300 billion the federal government spends each year via contracts and grants to more than 30,000 groups, businesses and organizations.
Making public data about the recipients of that $300 billion chunk of the federal budget and how they spend the tax dollars would remove the biggest roadblock to public accountability that makes Pork Barrel spending possible - You can't track pork barrel if you don't who gets the money.
But then Trent Lott (R-MS) came along and killed the amendment:
Continue readingThe Senate's Rule 22 refers to the germaneness - i.e. relevance - of a proposed amendment. Translated from the Washington legislatese in which senators and congressmen so often hide, this means Lott thinks making sure the public can see who is getting more than $300 billion of their tax dollars has nothing to do with congressional ethics.
Put another way, Lott just told taxpayers to butt out.
Senate Passes Lobbying Reform; Bill Moves to House:
By a vote of 90-8 the Senate approved a lobbying reform bill that is being both praised and criticized from both sides of the aisle, according to the Washington Post. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) declares, “This legislation contains very serious reform.” One of the eight ‘nay’ voters, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), begged to differ, “It's extremely weak.” The most notable ‘nay’ votes came from the strongest proponents of reform: Senators Barack Obama (D-IL), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and McCain. The other four votes came from James Inhofe (R-OK), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Kerry (D-MA), and Jim DeMint (R-SC). Roll Call reported that Obama, the Democratic point man on reform was very unhappy, “Given that Mr. Abramoff just got five years in the pokey, the notion that this is the best we can do doesn’t make any sense.” Sen. Chris Dodd, a chief sponsor of the bill, sounded triumphant proclaiming in the New York Times, “There's a sign that's now up in front of the Capitol. It says ‘Not for Sale.’” Later, he admitted that the bill does not include “true meaningful campaign finance reform that breaks the link between the legislative favor seekers and the free flow of special interest private money.” Coburn made the best analogy, “You can wash the outside of the cup all you want. If the inside is still unclean, you're going to have the same problems.”
Congressman Closed Airport for Business Partner:
The Hill reports that Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA) “pushed for a provision in last year’s transportation bill that allowed the city of Rialto, Calif., to shut down its airport. By doing so, he paved the way for his business partner, Lewis Operating Corp., one of his top campaign contributors, to buy the land from the city and make plans to build Renaissance, a community consisting of 2,500 homes, parks and 80 acres of retail space on the former airport property and adjacent land.” The owner of Lewis Operating Corp. Richard Lewis and his employees contributed $19,000 to Miller’s campaigns since 1998, making them one of Miller’s top contributors. The airport is located in the district of Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA) who is also a top recipient of Lewis money, raking in $19,000 this election cycle. The FAA did not support closing the Rialto airport and a spokesman stated, “This is the first time … an airport has been closed through the legislative process.”
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