The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for President, requested $3.4 million in congressional earmarks for clients of the lobbying firm that employs the son of running mate Joe Biden. Hunter Biden, who's a registered lobbyist (see here and here for his clients), apparently lobbied Obama's Senate office directly:
Campaign spokesman David Wade also said Hunter Biden never appealed directly to Obama."Hunter Biden met with the Obama Senate office, not with Senator Obama," Wade said.
Read the whole thing. An aside: Nice to see the Washington Post use information from both Taxpayers for ...
Continue readingTCS centralizes earmark data
Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense have collected, in one handy spot, all of their Fiscal 2009 earmark data and trenchant analyses of same. So far, the Senate (which has much laxer earmark disclosure rules) has passed more bills than the House -- we saw the same pattern last year as well, though traditionally the House had run ahead of the Senate. All the files are available as downloadable spread sheets.
Continue readingThe Last Line of Defense
Sen. Ted Stevens has served as senator from Alaska for most of his life and nearly all of the state’s... View Article
Continue readingSen. Coburn’s Earmark Reports
Back in the last Congress, Sen.Tom Coburn, the Senate’s “earmark sheriff,” was chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Government Relations.... View Article
Continue readingTracking Obama’s earmarks
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., steered earmarks to some organizations with a board member who is also serving as a top bundler to his presidential campaign, according to the Next Right. This raises what for me is one of the primary questions about earmarks in general. Members of Congress say they know the needs of their states (or districts, in the case of House members). Whence comes this in-depth knowledge? Do they hear about needs from constituents, from their own personal observations, or do insiders--lobbyists, campaign contributors and others--educate them? Because the process is so opaque, in most cases we simply ...
Continue readingSenate Milcon earmark file available from TCS
Taxpayers for Common Sense has now posted a downloadable spreadsheet listing all earmarks from the S. 3301, the Senate Military Construction appropriations act.
Taxpayers writes,
In addition to the usual pork for fitness centers and chapels, the bills contained something unusual: Two earmarks worth $240 million for the Missile Defense Agency's European adventure.
I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff worth digging into. For more info from Taxpayers on earmarks, see here.
Continue readingTCS releases Senate Transportaion & HUD earmark database
Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense have analyzed, and compiled in a downloadable database available at the link, the earmarks from S. 3261, the Senate Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. They note,
The FY09 Senate appropriations bill providing money for transportation and Housing and Urban Development projects contains 609 earmarks worth more than $954 million (click here for the database). This represents a cut of more than one-quarter in the value of earmarks from the Senate-passed bill for FY08 and a significant reduction in the overall number of earmarks. The FY08 Senate bill contained 822 earmarks ...Continue reading
Saddle Road funding update
In this post and this post, we looked at an earmark Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, secured for the Saddle Road project on Big Island. I sent a query along to Dave Gedeon, the project manager for the Central Federal Lands Highway Division of the Federal Highway Administration, asking how the project was funded--whether these were military, Dept. of Transportation, or state funds, and which agency was managing the project. He was kind enough to respond and clarify:
Initial construction of Saddle Road began with the section that passes through the Department of the Army's Pohakuloa Training Area; funding for ...Continue reading
A long winding partially underwater earmarked road?
Commenter Archie Mead points out something I didn't know about the discrepancy between Rep. Neil Abercrombie's description of an earmark and the description of what I believe is the same earmark in the House Appropriations Committee report:
Even with the name Abercrombie to connect the two entries, it's still very vague. Saddle Road, which connects the harbor to the inland Pohakuloa Training Area, location of war games for Iraq-bound troops and Stryker tanks, is located on the Big Island, while Schofield Barracks is located on Oahu, another island.
I doubt that Saddle Road will be running underwater ...
Continue readingMore on Stevens’ earmarks
The Washington Post notes that Alaskans are fretting the potential fallout of the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, for not disclosing more than $250,000 in gifts from VECO Corp. Taxpayers for Common Sense sums it up more succinctly:
Taxpayers for Common Sense has released the last four years of earmark data for Alaska to help create an understanding of how powerful Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) has remained as an appropriator. The new research has found that Senator Stevens has secured or played a significant role in securing more than 891 earmarks worth $3.2 billion, which comes to ...Continue reading
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