John Murtha’s $150,000,000 Pork Buffet
by John Little on 3/08/2007Congressional transparency is not pretty:
The committee disclosed 1,337 earmarks worth $3 billion. This year is the first in which earmarks were disclosed under new House rules mandating that representatives identify their earmarks in letters to the committee certifying they have no financial interest in the project. The report accompanying the bill contained a chart listing projects and sponsors, but not the amounts of the earmark: TCS searched the report and added the value of the earmarks to our accompanying database. TCS will soon release an updated version of the earmark database listing undisclosed earmarks, earmark beneficiaries and scanned images of the letters, which are not available on the committee’s web site.
John Murtha led the way with over 150 million dollars in earmarks:
Murtha, the defense industry’s darling, has been known throughout his tenure on the defense panel to shell out a large number of earmarks. His biggest earmark in the bill is $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), a move that sparked a fierce fight with Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), who earlier this year voted in a private meeting to strip Murtha’s earmark.
The Bush administration requested $16 million to shut down the center, which is in Murtha’s district, because it replicated the work of a similar center.
Murtha’s second highest earmark is for $15 million for a military molecular medicine initiative.
How can this system generate anything but corruption? Noel Sheppard calls it a national disgrace:
As one can see, earmarking is quite bipartisan. And, as The Hill noted, these totals are down by about 50 percent from last year’s defense bill.
However, this is a national disgrace coming less than 24 hours after the passing of a so-called ethics bill, and an honest, impartial media would be pounding the table about this issue.
Will they? Will this be a focus of discussion during today’s newscasts, or in tomorrow’s papers?
Assume for a second that less than 24 hours after a Republican-controlled Congress passed an ethics bill such earmarks and pork had been revealed. Think that would get media’s attention?
Yeah. I do, too.
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