After it hired a lobbyist and its employees' contributed to a member of Congress' leadership political action committee, a
Over the last three years, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., says he has earmarked at least $10.4 million in defense funds for Phoenix Products, Inc., a small company in McKee, Ky., that makes aircraft accessories, including custom V.I.P. interiors for Black Hawk helicopters that offer the finest leather," fabric, naugahyde and carpet, according to the firm's Web site.
In the 2008 Defense Appropriations Act that was signed into ...
Continue readingOmnibus Bill Thwarts Transparency, Accountability
Regardless of what happens to the Omnibudgetbusterblusterbus bill -- sorry, my fingers slipped -- the Omnibus spending bill (made searchable by our friends at the Heritage Foundation), it's fair to say that citizen oversight of Congress (and congressional oversight of Congress, for whatever that's worth) took a shot to the chin today. The Hill's Alex Bolton reports that the bill's 3,565 pages contain somewhere between 8,983 earmarks (according to Taxpayers for Common Sense), 9,200 earmarks (according to a Senate staffer) and 11,402 earmarks (according to Heritage's excellent Ominibuster blog). There are hundreds of new earmarks previously undisclosed--115 worth $117 million in the previously "earmark free" Homeland Security bill--that have been "airdropped" in at the last minute. Rep. Marsha Blackburn just noted on C-Span (I'm watching as I type) that the bill weighs in at a hefty 35 pounds when printed. Members have only a few hours to digest all that paper before voting. The bill will appropriate something like hundreds of billions of dollars in funds. In what other arena of life do you make such momentous decisions with so little time to think? "Rush into that subprime mortgage," "buy that stock of a company you'd never heard of before," "a week is plenty of time to find out if someone is worth marrying," -- thus does our Congress decide how to spend our money. This is primarily a failure of the majority (regardless of which party is in the majority--the Republicans were equally opaque) and of leadership, which prefers to dump a monstrosity of a bill--stitched together behind closed doors--on their colleagues with no time for debate, and no time for their constituents to make their opinions known.
Continue readingDifferent Earmark Strokes for Different Folks
Freshman Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) brought financial oversight experience with her to Washington as a former prosecutor and Missouri state auditor. And she has said that fighting for greater transparency and openness in how the federal government operates would be the focus of her time as a senator, "as it relates to cost savings and being very stingy with the taxpayer dime," as quoted by the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune, her hometown newspaper. Along with John McCain (R-Ariz.), she sponsored earmark disclosure language that would require committee and conference reports on the bill to list the name(s) of the sponsor and intended recipient(s) of any earmarks. Plus, her proposal would have required information on the earmark be made electronically and easily accessible to the public at least 48 hours prior to the vote on the bill or the final conference report, according to SourceWatch. McCaskill has also been working with Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) to set up an independent, bipartisan commission to oversee wartime contracts modeled after the commission then-Sen. Harry Truman chaired during World War II.
Continue readingAnd the Insanely Useful Web Sites Predict the Winner of the GOP Senate Leadership Scramble to be…
Following up on Paul's insanely useful look at Sen. Jon Kyl, who will replace departing Sen. Trent Lott as minority whip, here's a slightly different look at those jockeying to move on up in the leadership and take over Kyl's old job as Republican conference chairman (I'm using the Washington Post's list of likely contenders). If Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison rises in the hierarchy, 20 former staffers of hers who are now lobbyists can say they once worked for the person responsible for the Senate GOP's message operations (compared to three for Sen. Richard Burr and none for Sen. Lamar Alexander -- so far at least). Hutchison has the most robust leadership PAC, called KPAC; in 2007, it has raised $632,952, of which $549,250 has been contributed by individuals, with the balance coming from other PACs. Burr has raised $215,500 -- most of which comes from other PACs, according to the latest FEC filing. Just $15,000 of the donations to the Next Century Fund came from individuals. Alexander's leadership PAC, the Tenn PAC, has raised $15,000 so far in 2007. If you're just following the money, you might infer that more people with more at stake on Capitol Hill have a vested interest in Hutchison moving up as opposed to Burr or Alexander. That holds for earmark recipients as well (see below the fold for more...)
Continue readingDefense Conference Report Contains more than 2,000 Earmarks
A source on the Hill emails about the just released conference report for Defense Appropriations, saying that it "contains a massive number of earmarks – 2,049 to be exact." I'm going to round the figures somewhat (they were calculated on the fly) but total cost of the earmarks is $4.9 billion. Included are 24 new earmarks costing about $59 million that were “airdropped” into the conference report. "These earmarks were considered by neither the House nor the Senate and were immaculately conceived in the conference report," he says. I've started skimming the report, and not everything is going up. According to EarmarkWatch, for example, Rep. James Moran had sponsored or co-sponsored 29 House Defense earmarks totalling $47,000,000 in the House bill; after conference, his name was still attached to 29 earmarks, but the amount budgeted for them will be $40 million.
Continue readingMore Earmark Reform Needed
Congressional Quarterly reports that a small group of Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee are working to reform how earmarks are decided upon. And little wonder, appropriators of both houses have recently been caught red handed abusing them. Seven of the 29 Republicans on the committee are meeting on a weekly basis in an attempt to come up with a reform that appropriators can agree to. One idea they?ve discussed is requiring that both the chairman and the ranking minority member approve all earmarks. The CQ article also lists several other ad hoc groups of lawmakers in both chambers that are looking to further reform the earmark process.
One plan sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey would cap appropriations earmarks and divide the dollars equally among members of the House and Senate. Besides the GOP, members of the Congressional Black Caucus are looking to reform how earmark dollars are spread around in light of a CQ report that showed a large disparity depending on the race of the lawmaker. Republicans are also advocating more transparency in how earmarks are handled. Here, here to that!
Continue readingFBI Fishes for Pork in Stevens Investigation
The ongoing federal investigation of Sen. Ted Stevens is exploring the Alaska lawmakers pattern, thoroughly documented by Chuck Neubauer, Judy Pasternak and Richard T. Cooper of the Los Angeles Times, of earmarking taxpayer dollars to organizations (among them Alaskan seafood producers) that hired Stevens' son, Ben, as a consultant. Matt Apuzzo of the Associated Press has the latest developments:
WASHINGTON - Federal authorities investigating Sen. Ted Stevens are trolling the Alaska fishing industry for evidence of whether the powerful Republican pushed seafood legislation that benefited his lobbyist son... Industry officials and attorneys involved in the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because authorities have told them not to discuss the probe, said investigators are asking about federal legislation that directly or indirectly aided the senator's son, Ben, who is a state lobbyist and politician. The legislation was passed as earmarks, brief spending items that lawmakers tack onto bills to steer federal money to pet projects. Ted Stevens, an unapologetic user of earmarks, is the biggest champion for Alaska's $2 billion-a-year seafood industry.Details of the earmarks under investigation--including what Ben Stevens did (or didn't do) for his fees--are below the fold; it's worth noting that because Stevens fils was a state lawmaker, most of these payments were made public on his personal financial disclosure. A bunch of Ben Stevens' forms are available from the Center for Public Integrity, here--just scroll down toward the bottom of the page. Continue reading
Earmark of Aquarius Defeated
Just got word, via Ed Frank of Americans for Prosperity, that an earmark to fund a museum near Woodstock that was requested by both Sen. Charles Schumer and Sen. Hillary Clinton. Columnist Robert Novak noted some campaign contributions in connection with the earmark, which promised $1 million to the Bethel Museum. Novak wrote,
Bethel typifies the earmark epidemic because political insiders are often found pushing pork. The museum is funded principally by billionaire Alan Gerry's foundation, which has annual investment income of $24 million. Federal Election Commission records show that Gerry has donated at least $229,000 to political campaigns, and his wife, Sandra, has contributed $90,000 over the past 10 years (including $26,000 in the last election cycle to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, headed by Schumer). On June 30, the Gerrys gave the maximum $9,200 to Clinton's presidential campaign, three days after the two New York senators put the Bethel earmark into the Labor-HHS bill.Sen. Tom Coburn and Sen. Jon Kyl sponsored an amendment that diverted the funds from Bethel to the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant program. Incidentally, the Bethel Museum earmark is still up for grabs on EarmarkWatch.org, as are many others. The Earmark of Aquarius isn't the only sketchy one in there, and EarmarkWatch.org gives you the tools to find them. Continue reading
Earmarks Now a Danger to Troops
In what must be the most bizarre tale of earmarking I've ever heard the Oregonian is reporting that the T-shirts purchased for Marines through a $2 million earmark have been banned because they "can melt, causing severe burns." Rep. David Wu, the member who inserted the earmark is "horrified". This information has come out due to the excellent database set up by the Seattle Times.
Wu also is "horrified" that journalists and others would connect the earmarks he distributed to the campaign contributions he received. Now perhaps, if given a huge benefit of the doubt, Wu was attempting to get a contract to a district based business to do this kind of work. You know, the typical "help out the district" work that members of Congress are supposed to do. Even if we assume that, this example clearly shows that earmarking is not an efficient way of doling out important contracts. Maybe if there was some kind of competitive bidding or review process we wouldn't have Marines getting "severe burns" from their own melting clothes.
Continue readingSeattle Times Creates Earmark, Political Contributions and Lobbying Database
Sunlight's Real Time Investigations' Project has done partial investigations into the connections between earmark recipients and their political contributions, but the Seattle Times has launched a database of 2007 defense earmarks for every member of Congress compared to the political contributions they received from the recipients of those earmarks. They also included how much was spent on lobbying by the recipients. (The campaign finance information only goes back six years. It's unclear what period the lobbying money covers.) You can search by lawmaker's name or by the name of a company or nonprofit that got the earmark. You can also browse lawmakers or earmark recipients by state. (Click on the corporate names for the information on how much was spent on lobbying.)
The reporters were able to tie only about half of the 2,700 earmarks in the 2007 defense spending bill to members of Congress. And they included only items Congress funded that the military did not ask for. Even so, they found some 45,000 matches.
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