One of the first things I do when I'm investigating something is to collect--and, of course, to read--as many relevant documents as I can. Establishing a paper trail is a useful exercise for any number of reasons, not least because it gives you a sense of the chronology, and understanding of the issues involved, leads on who to ask for more information, and government agencies put out reams of reports and documents on their work. The "Reoriented Express" -- the effort to move a stretch of railrod track owned by CSX from its current position, somewhere between a quarter and a half mile from the beaches of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, to an inland position -- has generated its share of paper. There was a 1995 report prepared for the Gulf Regional Planning Commission, followed by a report and Web site set up by the Gulf Coast Railroad Relocation Project. That latter report was the first to note the prohibitive price tag for moving the railroad inland; it offered rough cost estimates for three different inland routes:
The test alignment within Corridor 1 has a unit cost of $36.0 million per mile, and a total cost of $2,683,695,296.
The test alignment within Corridor 2 has a unit cost of $22.8 million per mile and a total cost of $1,804,661,425.
The test alignment within Corridor 3 has a unit cost of $22.8 million per mile and a total cost of $2,437,212,170.Continue reading
Beelzebub in the Briefs
Sorry for the title of this post--I was looking for a play on "the devil is in the details," (devil in the digest? Satan in the summaries?), and this one is hardly satisfactory. Buried at the bottom of a column in today's Washington Post was a shorter version of this item:
Senator Asks Navy to Aid Shipyards Hit by Katrina
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) is pressing the Navy to pay for hurricane damage to Northrop Grumman Corp. shipyards in his home state that the firm's insurer won't cover.
The Senate Appropriations Committee, which Cochran chairs, added language to an emergency spending bill that could force the Navy -- against its wishes -- to give the company, the service's No. 1 shipbuilder, as much as $500 million.
The Navy says it is negotiating with Northrop on payment of some damage costs. The emergency spending request that the House approved directs the Navy not to pay costs that insurance may cover.
Northrop is suing Factory Mutual Insurance Co. of Johnston, R.I., for denying claims to its shipyards in Pascagoula, Miss., but says it needs the money now.
Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman employs 10,000 workers at its Ingalls unit in Pascagoula.Continue reading
The Reoriented Express
There's a lot of interesting information over at Porkbusters (just keep scrolling) on the $700 million earmark that Trent Lott inserted in an emergency appropriations bill to relocate a stretch of coast-hugging CSX rail track inland (the original AP story describing it is here). N.Z. Bear links to some photos that Ed Frank of Americans for Prosperity took of a small section of track and the surrounding (Katrina flattened) architecture. And Alasandra Alawine, a local resident, has offered a summary of what she's gleaned of the project's history, origins and shortcomings. An opponent of moving the railroad, she also blogs at MS Gulf Coast.
Continue readingEarmarks Down for FY 07; Coburn Pushes Accountability
Porkbusters has a great chart on their site showing how deep the reductions in earmarks are for the coming fiscal year. Their source says that earmarks have been reduced by 37% from fiscal year 2006, a huge drop considering that every year over the past decade they have grown exponentially. This also comes on the heels of yesterday’s Roll Call story on Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) enforcing new earmarking rules, restricting members to 5 earmark requests each.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has established a new website to push for accountability in how taxpayer funds are spent. The website states:
Each month, taxpayers "contribute" to the Federal government out of their hard-earned income. That "contribution" is taken by the Federal government under laws of Federal taxation, under threat of imprisonment and fines for those who refuse to pay their taxes. When a government wields this enormous amount of power, there is no room for any abuse of that power. Unaccountable spending of tax dollars is an abuse of power. Taxpayers have a right to demand accountability of all Federal agencies and programs.
Accountability means that an agency or program measurably achieves the mission it was created to achieve, in a cost-effective, efficient, and open manner.
As the branch of government that spends the taxpayers' money, Congress is ultimately responsible for ensuring accountability for those expenditures. When Congress fails to do its job overseeing current Federal spending, while at the same time, increasing that spending each year, citizens have been unconstitutionally deprived of appropriate checks and balances to which they are entitled as taxpayers.
Coburn's new site plans to issue reports on government waste, earmarks, and failures to account for government spending of taxpayer funds. It mirrors the House Government Reform Committee Minority Office website run by ranking Democrat Henry Waxman (D-CA) that regularly issues investigative reports on government actions and spending.
Continue readingRanking Ethics Democrat in Spotlight for Earmarks:
The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that the Justice Department has commenced a probe of Alan Mollohan (D-WV), the ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee, for his use of earmarking projects for nonprofits in his district:
A 12-term congressman, Mr. Mollohan sits on the House Appropriations Committee, a panel that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff dubbed the "favor factory." Working with fellow West Virginian Sen. Robert Byrd, Mr. Mollohan has steered at least $178 million to nonprofit groups in his district over the past five years using "earmarks" -- special-interest provisions that are slipped into spending bills to direct money to pet projects.
The money has brought more than jobs and building projects to his district. It has formed and financed a tight-knit network of nonprofit institutions in West Virginia that are run by people who contribute regularly to Mr. Mollohan's campaigns, political-action committee and a family foundation. One of these people also invests in real estate alongside Mr. Mollohan and his wife. The network of contributors also includes private companies that get contracts through these nonprofits.
…
Central to the Mollohan network is a former staffer, Laura Kuhns, who heads the nonprofit Vandalia Heritage Foundation. It is a historic-preservation group that is financed almost exclusively by earmarks backed by Mr. Mollohan. It paid her $102,000 in 2004. Vandalia is coordinating construction of the new building for the Institute for Scientific Research, or ISR, and Ms. Kuhns sits on its board and those of three other nonprofits that get funds via earmarks.
She and her husband also are partners with Mr. Mollohan and his wife in five properties in Bald Head Island, N.C., valued in local real-estate records at a total of $2 million. The Mollohans recently bought a $1.45 million oceanfront home on the island, called the Peppervine House, which they rent out for $8,555 a week, next to the Kuhns' house, known as Cape Fearless. These and other investments, including a stake in a nine-story luxury condominium complex in Washington, appear to have made the Mollohans wealthy.
Mollohan has not been accused of wrong doing but “[s]uch a pattern raises questions about whether the donations or deals might be a way beneficiaries of earmarks could influence the legislator's actions.”
Continue readingInternal Restrictions, Scandal Atmosphere Lead to Fewer Earmarks:
According to Roll Call, a combination of internal restrictions on the number of earmarks requested and the current atmosphere around Congress in the wake of the dual Abramoff and Cunningham scandals has led to a reduction in the number of earmarks members are seeking. The key to driving down earmarks has been an internal rule implemented by House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA):
Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) directed each of the cardinals [a term for appropriations subcommittee chairmen – PB] to set limits for their specific subcommittees, with the bulk of the panels setting that ceiling at five requests per lawmaker.
Among those panels allowing more was the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education subcommittee, which restricted members to 10 requests.
Despite the reductions hard-line conservatives, such as Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), are still unhappy with the process: “Nobody’s happier to see fewer earmark requests this year than me but, with zero accountability, the earmarking process is still ripe for abuse and waste. Rank-and-file Members need the ability to attempt to strike out earmarks that are wasteful or suspicious. Anything short of that is not real reform.”
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 readingIn 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.
The World of Congressional Earmarking:
The Washington Post delves into the world of Congressional earmarking where it is completely ethical for lawmakers to suggest that groups hire lobbyists and the lobbyists, after winning contracts for their clients, donate money to the lawmaker’s campaign fund. One group, Students for Free Enterprise, talked to Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) about getting federal funding for their organization, which included a student exchange program. Blunt suggested that they hire a lobbyist, so they hired Blunt’s former chief of staff Gregg Hartley. The group paid Hartley $80,000 and won $750,000 to “expand their headquarters” and $250,000 for the student exchange program. Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) suggested some lobbying firms to a defense contractor back in 2001. This year the company received a $1.5 million earmark and Reynolds received $6,000 from the lobbying firm he suggested that they hire. The article is full of similar stories of lawmakers, including Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) and Vern Ehlers (R-MI), suggesting lobbyists, writing earmarks, and receiving campaign contributions.
Continue readingMore News:
- Roll Call reports that “Despite public and private assurances by Senate Rules and Administration Chairman Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the Senate may not be able to wrap up work on the lobbying reform legislation it is preparing to take up today.”
- “Reps. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the committee’s chairman and ranking member, respectively, met to discuss the panel’s direction shortly before the House left for the weeklong St. Patrick’s Day recess, and more talks are expected soon, GOP and Democratic sources say,” according to Roll Call. Those expected to come before the ethics committee includes Tom DeLay (R-TX), Bob Ney (R-OH), John Conyers (D-MI), Richard Pombo (R-CA), and Jim McDermott (D-WA).
- The Birmingham News reports that backers of earmarks are invoking U.S. law to show that earmarks are justified. Earmark supporters point to the U.S. Constitution Article I, Section 9 reads, “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law,” which also means, “Congress has the right to tailor the nation's budgets as generally or as specifically as it chooses.” Spencer Bachus (R-AL) states, “Either a bureaucrat is going to make a decision how to spend it or your elected member of Congress.”
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