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 readingLobbying for a Piece of the Bailout and Stimulus Action?
First a word of caution: when the title of a database ends with a question mark (in this case, A Piece of the Action?, approach it with some caution.
I've tried to put together a tool for tracking the lobbying surrounding the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, and whatever other bailouts and stimuli Congress enacts (TARP II? Son of Stimulus?) over the next few months. Using very imperfect records from two online congressional disclosure systems that track the same information in different ways (the classic square filters, round holes government problem), I've pieced together ...
Continue readingPMA Investigation: Looking for More than Straw Men?
Congressional Quarterly looks in breadth and depth at the influence of the PMA Group, whose offices were raided by the FBI. (The story is co-written by my old colleague Alex Knott, who started delving into PMA back in 2004.) As good a story as it is ... here's an excerpt clipped from InstaPundit ...
More than 100 House members secured earmarks in a major spending bill for clients of a single lobbying firm " The PMA Group " known for its close ties to John P. Murtha , the congressman in charge of Pentagon appropriations.It shows you how good they were, said Keith ...
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Treasury 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
Rangel-ing the Campaign Cash
My colleague Nancy Watzman flags a fundraising flier from Rep. Charles Rangel, who held a Valentine's Day fundraiser this morning hosted by tax and accounting specialists Ernst & Young (nothing says Valentine's quite like a firm involved in the U.S. tax shelter industry).
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Murtha’s PMA Group Connections
Half a dozen firms that Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., has sponsored earmarks for in the current defense appropriations bill hired PMA Group, the Washington based defense lobbying firm in 2008. Last night ABC news reported that the FBI raided PMA Group offices in November.
Earlier this year federal investigators raided another company with ties to Murtha, Kuchera Industries, a company that has never hired PMA Group but has received several earmarks from Murtha in the past years. In the 2008 election cycle Kuchera's employees have given $11,500 to Murtha's campaign.
In ...
Continue readingGenealogy 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 readingPro Publica Finds Earmarks in the Stimulus
Mike Grabell of Pro Publica dug through the "earmark free" stimulus and found...earmarks!. There's a story with more detail here (and the obligatory Shakespeare paraphrase).
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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