Ironically, the super PAC named “Ending Spending Action Fund” may end up having the largest single donation to a super PAC. Records show Joe Ricketts, who built his fortune through Ameritrade, is trying to reduce spending by spending -- a lot.
Ricketts wrote a check for $5.48 million to the super PAC in September. That beats the $5 million checks written earlier in the cycle by Sheldon and Miriam Adelson and Harold Simmons And it made up about half of the $11.3 million that Ricketts donated to Ending Spending last month alone.
The owner of the Chicago Cubs, Ricketts ...
Continue readingHouse freshmen: New members find new earmarks?
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More than two dozen first-term House members, part of an enormous freshman class swept into office on an anti-incumbent tide of disgust over Washington insider dealing, have introduced a combined 263 bills designed to benefit the bottom lines of hometown corporations.
An analysis of campaign finance records by the Sunlight Foundation shows that some of the corporations that stand to save money from bills aimed at temporarily suspending tariffs on products that the firms import are also campaign contributors to the members of Congress introducing ...
Continue readingWhat ever happened to earmark transparency?
Late last year, the Obama administration floated a draft Executive memo that would have brought transparency to the currently opaque earmark process. The document... View Article
Continue readingNews Without Transparency: House Passes Bridge BIll After an Earmark Debate
News Without Transparency: House Passes Bridge Bill After an Earmark Debate Matt Rumsey and Melanie Buck wrote this post. Earlier... View Article
Continue readingTariff bill opens the floodgates for lobbyists
In the three months before congressional leaders announced that they are once again opening the process to suspend tariffs, at... View Article
Continue readingOlympia Snowe: A red-meat Republican after all?
Many people in Washington will miss Olympia Snowe, the Maine Republican and bipartisan bridge-builder who announced Tuesday evening that she has decided not to seek a fourth term in the U.S. Senate. But perhaps none more so than Charlie Palmer.
Though the confirmed centrist hardly fits the image of a "red-meat Republican," the Charlie Palmer Steakhouse, a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, appears to be one of her favorite venues. Records compiled by Sunlight Foundation's Political Party Time show that the GOP lawmaker held 27 fundraisers there between May and December of last year. On three ...
Continue readingObama Administration May Take on Earmarks
While there’s currently a so-called “ban” on earmarks in the Congress, it’s widely reported that this earmark ban isn’t really... View Article
Continue readingSunlight Live to cover Rematch of the Elizabeth Warren Hearing
If you didn't get your fill of fireworks on July 4, then be sure to tune in to a Capitol Hill fireworks display set for July 14. That's when Elizabeth Warren returns to Capitol Hill to defend her Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
A little more than month ago, Warren encountered a tough interrogation by committee member Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., when the congressman accused Warren of misleading the committee. The contentious hearing turned nasty when the two got into an argument about Warren's schedule.
Thursday ...
Continue readingDespite moratorium, Lungren staff met with firm seeking earmark
Six months after Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., joined a House Republican voluntary moratorium on requesting earmarks, his staff met with executives from a cyber security company that requested an earmark to explain their appropriations process, according to internal company emails from the firm released by a group of hackers known as Anonymous.
Though House Republicans requested no earmarks in 2010 and the House Republican leadership agreed to a ban on requesting earmarks--appropriations directed to specific beneficiaries in congressional spending bills--in 2011, there have been some indications that members have found ways around the ban. For example, Rep. James Moran, D-Va ...
Continue readingStill No Earmark Moratorium
I’ve been over this before: there is no earmark moratorium. USA Today just proves that even more with this report... View Article
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