The Center for Responsive Politics and Taxpayers for Common Sense -- two of our favorite organizations -- have released their comprehensive earmark and influence database for fiscal year 2010 requests.
Among House members, Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., a member of the Appropriations Committee, tops the list of members who have gotten campaign contributions from earmark recipients (complete breakdown here). Interesting to note that Moran's top donor so far, Mantech International, got a $2 million earmark from the Northern Virginia congressman.
In the Senate, Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye received the most contributions from earmark beneficiaries. Inouye secured earmarks for his ...
Earmark Transparency Makes More Sense Than a Ban
The recent policies imposed by the House Appropriations Committee and the House Republican Caucus to ban for-profit earmarks and all... View Article
Continue reading72 Hours for Defense Appropriation Bill
Last week, Congress spent $1.1 trillion tax dollars by combining six pieces of appropriations (“spending”) legislation into one 1,000+ page... View Article
Continue readingEnsuring 72 Hours for Remaining Spending Bills
It's looking extremely likely that Congress will take up debate of six massive appropriations (read: "spending") bills this week by combining them into one big omnibus bill and trying to pass them all at once. Assuming that does indeed come to pass, it's imperative that the House and Senate allow members of Congress, the media, and the public the necessary time to understand how our money is to be spent by putting the entire omnibus bill online for at least 72 hours before it's debated.
Continue readingEarmark My Words
What do top earmarkers talk about in Congress? Does our money go where their mouths are? In the case of... View Article
Continue readingThe Rule of Rules
If you’ve been following the Real Time Investigations hunt for House lawmaker earmark disclosures you probably already know that many... View Article
Continue readingPolitical Party Time: More than 170 fundraisers for appropriators (already!) in 2009
We're just past the end of the first quarter of the current election cycle (with seven more to go before it's all over), but members of the Appropriations Committees in the House and the Senate have already had <a href="http://blog.politicalpartytime.org/2009/04/23/more-than-170-parties-with-appropriators/">more than 170 fundraisers</a>, according to my colleague Nancy Watzman.
A few thoughts: Earmark season (why do I imagine a lobbyist dressed up like Elmer Fudd?) comes early in the year--requests had to be submitted to members by April 3 in the House; for the Senate they'll start ...
Continue readingSign the Petition to ReadTheBill.org
If you knew where to look, you might have been able to find the massive FY 09 Omnibus Appropriations bill... View Article
Continue readingAppropriations Omnibus released
The House Committee on Rules has released the latest legislative tome -- this time, the rest of the FY2009 appropriations. The Labor-HHS-Education portion of the report -- available here -- is packed with earmarks. If you can download the pdf (I had trouble getting it to go), check pages 81 to 84 -- lots of earmarks in small type -- but no sponsor names (unless I'm missing something).
(Update I am -- lots of pages of lists at the bottom of the document, which didn't load completely the first time I tried to get into it...
Continue readingPMA Group Investigation
After a series of articles noting the November FBI raid of the offices of the PMA Group, a Washington lobby... View Article
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