The House on Thursday night turned back another call to investigate the PMA Group, a once-powerful lobbying firm whose offices were recently raided by the FBI and which has close ties to Pennsylvania Rep. John P. Murtha (D).Twenty-one Democrats, including nine freshmen, voted to proceed with debate on the measure offered by Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake (R) calling for an investigation of the lobbying firm. Most of the Democrats represent fiscally conservative districts.
Republican Rep. Don Young of Alaska--the focus of an unrelated federal corruption probe--voted with the Democrats to table Flake's motion. He was joined by ...
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Visclosky endorses some form of action on PMA Group
A friend passes on this story:
U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-1st, was expecting the House to take some sort of action later today with respect to an inquiry into The PMA Group, the Washington, D.C., lobbying firm reportedly under investigation by the FBI.PMA has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Visclosky's campaign committee, as have many of its clients, for some of whom Visclosky has secured millions of dollars in federal contracts.
I have been urging the House leadership to open an inquiry into PMA, Visclosky told the Chesterton Tribune today. I am encouraged that ...
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Senate approves earmarks for PMA Group clients
Sen. Tom Coburn would like to do away with all earmarks; this evening the Senate voted on an amendment he proposed that would eliminate, from the Omnibus Appropriations bill, earmarks for 14 clients of the soon-to-be-defunct lobbying shop, the PMA Group. The purpose of the amendment read as follows:
To prohibit taxpayer dollars from being earmarked to 14 clients of a lobbying firm under Federal investigation for making campaign donations in exchange for political favors for the group's clients.
Like previous measures aimed at PMA Group, this one failed, 52-43. In essence, the House is on record as finding ...
Continue readingCities seeking a Piece of the Action?
From the A Piece of the Action? database, here's a list of cities that have hired lobbyists who have reported that the bailout or the stimulus is a specific lobbying issue, complete with links (if any) to project requests on the excellent StimulusWatch.org page for those cities:
Birmingham, MI
Jasper, AL
Thomasville, AL
Center Point, AL
Jackson, AL
Atmore, AL
Denton, TX
Whittier, CA
Brewton ...
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 readingHidden earmarks?
This passage is from page 85 of the Labor, HHS, Education portion of the committee report for the big appropriations bill:
Buildings and Facilities
Within the amount provided for Buildings and Facilities, the bill includes $30,000,000 for nationwide repairs and improvements; $71,300,000 for the completion of Building 24 on the Roybal Campus in Atlanta, Georgia; $1,500,000 for facilities and equipment at the CDC laboratory in Ft. Collins, Colorado; and the remaining funds shall be used to begin planning and construction of Buildings 107 . and 108 on the Chamblee Campus in Atlanta, Georgia.
...don't ...
Continue readingWho’s seeking A Piece of the Action?
The bailout (the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, etc.) and the stimulus (the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act) are massive pieces of legislation with lots of moving parts. Thus, the more eyeballs on them and what's around them, the better.
A Piece of the Action? tracks one aspect of the unfolding age of bailing and stimulating -- interests hiring Washington lobbyists to at the very least monitor and likely to try to influence how the government spends its money.
As noted immediately below, this database is an imperfect resource. But it's what we can do ...
Continue readingTreasury Taking a Bath on TARP
Via twitter, via Right Org, comes this very cool way of tracking the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program investments from Ethisphere -- almost like an S&P index of stocks of publicly traded firms that have received money from TARP:
For the week ended February 13, 2009, the aggregate Ethisphere TARP Index is down a total of $86.5 billion, out of the original investment principal of $195.5 billion for a total balance of $109 billion. However, the Adjusted Ethisphere TARP Index, which excludes the calamity investments, has an aggregate loss $27.6 billion as of the week ...Continue reading
Genealogy of the Stimulus Bill
The current economic crisis does seem to present a combination of circumstances (the housing crisis, a credit crisis, declining international trade, rising unemployment), some of which are causes, some of which are symptoms, none of which--of course--are particularly pleasant for those going through them. So how does Congress, legislatively, address new circumstances? Do members and their staffs (and the lobbyists whispering in their ears) craft bills to solve the problems at hand? Or do they go through their archives and relabel old bills as solutions to new problems?
Using the indispensable Govtrack.us, I'm going to look for antecedents ...
Continue readingGreasing the stimulus with pork?
Glenn Reynolds flags the latest twist on earmarks -- we'll have them, but call them something else:
At some point, [House Majority Whip James] Clyburn [(D-S.C.)] noted, there will be a list of projects funded by the package, and Members want to have input.The list is going to come from somewhere, he said.
House Appropriations ranking member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) questioned whether the bill can truly be considered free of earmarks when it will be loaded up with complicated formulas directing spending.
Calling it an earmark-free thing and then saying there are established formulas doesn't sound very ...
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