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11-04-2007, 04:14 PM
November 4, 2007
Even Cut 50 Percent, Earmarks Clog Military Bill
By MARILYN W. THOMPSON and RON NIXON
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 — Even though members of Congress cut back their pork barrel spending this year, House lawmakers still tacked on to the military appropriations bill $1.8 billion to pay 580 private companies for projects the Pentagon did not request.
Twenty-one members were responsible for about $1 billion in earmarks, or financing for pet projects, according to data lawmakers were required to disclose for the first time this year. Each asked for more than $20 million for businesses mostly in their districts, ranging from major military contractors to little known start-ups.
The list is topped by the veteran earmark champions Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is the chairman of the powerful defense appropriations subcommittee, and Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, the top Republican on the panel, who asked for $166 million and $117 million respectively. It also includes $92 million in requests from Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, a committee member who is under federal investigation for his ties to a lobbying firm whose clients often benefited from his earmarks.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, requested $32 million in earmarks, while Steny H. Hoyer, the majority leader, asked for $26 million for projects in the $459.6 billion defense bill, the largest of the appropriations bills that go through Congress.
As promised when they took control of Congress in January, House Democratic leaders cut in half from last year the value of earmarks in the bill, as they did in the other 11 agency spending measures. But some lawmakers complained that the leadership failed to address what it had called a “culture of corruption” in which members seek earmarks to benefit corporate donors. Earmarks have been a recurring issue in recent Congressional scandals, most recently the 2005 conviction of Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California, for accepting bribes from defense contractors.
“Pork hasn’t gone away at all,” said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, an earmark critic who cites the “circular fund-raising” surrounding many of them. “It would be wonderful if this was a partisan issue, with Republicans on the right side, but it is really not. Many of these companies use money appropriated through earmarks to turn around and lobby for more money. Some of them are just there to receive earmarks.”
Congressional earmarks are for programs that are not competitively bid , and the Bush administration has complained that they waste taxpayer dollars and skew priorities from military needs, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terror.
Thomas E. Mann, a Congressional scholar and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, though, sees the costs of earmarks as less of a problem than their potential for abuse.
“The fiscal fallout of earmarks is trivial,” he said. But they can lead to “conflicts of interest, the irrational and unconstructive allocation of resources, or their use by Congressional leaders as carrots and sticks to buy votes for larger measures that clearly lack majority support on the merits.”
The House version of the military bill includes 1,337 earmarks totaling $3 billion, the most Congressional earmarks in any of the spending bills passed this year. A conference committee is now reconciling House and Senate versions. The Senate added $5 billion in earmarks, but it is difficult to determine the sponsors because it has no disclosure rules.
About half of the House military earmarks go to universities, military bases and other public institutions; the other half to businesses and nonprofits. For the first time, members submitted written requests for each project and statements attesting that they had no personal financial interests in them. Previously, earmarks often were inserted anonymously. The New York Times analysis of earmarks used data compiled by the Washington-based watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense along with campaign contribution and lobbying records.
Democrats consider earmark reform a success, since they have significantly reduced their cost and brought “disclosure so constituents can see what their members have asked for,” said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi. “That’s one of the things we wanted to change, to bring more openness.” But the House Republican Conference contends that Democrats still use earmarks as a secretive slush fund to reward contributors.
Mr. Murtha has drawn much attention this year, first as he bitterly opposed the legislation requiring disclosure of earmarks, then continued his habit of submitting dozens of requests, most benefiting his hometown of Johnstown, Pa. (He asked for 47 earmarks.) Two Republicans said he threatened to block them from getting any earmarks when they questioned one of his requests. “You’re not going to get any, now or forever,” he warned Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who eventually received a written apology from the Pennsylvania congressman.
The Republican Conference chairman, Adam H. Putman of Florida, said Mr. Murtha’s behavior has been “like watching a throwback in time.”
“He’s a classic old-bull appropriator, basically showing a level of arrogance in which he breezily dismisses House rules, dismisses public inquiry and defies the spirit of disclosure,” Mr. Putnam said.
About $111 million of Mr. Murtha’s earmarks are for businesses and nonprofits closely aligned with him. He recruits defense firms and jobs to his economically depressed district and often pushes earmarks for them.
“I don’t make apologies for having earmarks,” Mr. Murtha, who declined to be interviewed for this article, told members in August. “When we see something that we think is not as valuable as something else is, we change it.”
Firms benefiting from Mr. Murtha’s help have given at least $437,000 to his campaign since 2005, with about $110,000 streaming in just before this year’s March 16 request deadline.
Some of Mr. Murtha’s earmarks are relatively small amounts for companies trying to gain a foothold in defense contracting, but few details about their projects are provided. KDH Defense Systems of Johnstown makes Navy body armor and Army elbow pads in a converted bra factory, and Mr. Murtha asked for a $2 million earmark to help the company improve its bulletproof vests. Another earmark would provide $3 million for KDH to develop a “waterways threat detection system.”
The company’s lobbying firm is KSA Consulting, which employed Mr. Murtha’s younger brother, Kit, until 2006. The firm has contributed $4,000 to Mr. Murtha’s campaign since 2005.
Eight companies on Mr. Murtha’s earmark list use a different lobbyist, the PMA Group, whose principals include Paul Magliochetti, a former aide to the defense appropriations subcommittee. The firm took in $840,000 in fees this year from those clients. PMA and its employees have given $58,600 to Mr. Murtha’s campaign since 2005, according to contribution records.
Mr. Murtha included four earmarks worth $10 million for Concurrent Technologies Corporation, a Johnstown-based nonprofit run by major contributors that has won $226 million in earmarks since 2004, according to figures compiled by the taxpayers watchdog group. Concurrent also relies on other lawmakers for support, getting $8 million more in earmarks, including one worth $1.5 million from Mr. Young, whose district in Florida has a Concurrent office. Mr. Young said the company did valuable work for Special Forces.
A Concurrent spokeswoman, Mary T. Bevan, said it was premature to discuss specific earmarks. “Congressionally directed funding is a small part of CTC’s overall revenues,” she said in an e-mail message.
In recent weeks, Concurrent has drawn attention, along with its sister operation, Commonwealth Research Institute, over whether Commonwealth paid a contract official for a no-show job while he awaited approval for an Air Force post. The man, Charles D. Riechers, died in an apparent suicide after a Congressional committee raised questions about the payments.
Mr. Young requested earmarks for 51 projects totaling $117 million. All but 15 requests benefit defense firms.
The Florida congressman has collected about $150,000 in contributions since 2005 from companies for which he earmarked projects in this year’s bill. Unlike Mr. Murtha, he received only one contribution — a $2,000 donation from the political action committee of DRS Technologies — in the days before the earmark deadline. A DRS spokesman said the company’s PAC bought a ticket to a Young fund-raiser.
Mr. Young said that his earmark numbers were high because as ranking subcommittee member, he also seeks earmarks on behalf of other Republicans.
He said he made requests only after “personal contacts to the various agencies” to make sure the projects were legitimate. “I want to make sure we are not putting money into something the Pentagon does not feel they need,” he said.
Mr. Lewis, whose relationship with a lobbying firm is now under federal scrutiny, got $85,500 from six companies for which he sponsored earmarks. Science Applications International Corporation, which received a $4 million earmark, donated $5,000 two weeks before the earmark deadline.
Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Hoyer each had 10 earmarks in the bill. Five of Ms. Pelosi’s earmarks went to companies in her district, as did six of Mr. Hoyer’s.
Ryan Alexander, director of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the public deserved disclosure of the cost and purpose of each earmark. It is important, she said, to judge earmarked projects against other priorities, “particularly in a time of two wars and so many demands on our resources.”
Barclay Walsh contributed reporting.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/washington/04earmarks.html) Company
Even Cut 50 Percent, Earmarks Clog Military Bill
By MARILYN W. THOMPSON and RON NIXON
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 — Even though members of Congress cut back their pork barrel spending this year, House lawmakers still tacked on to the military appropriations bill $1.8 billion to pay 580 private companies for projects the Pentagon did not request.
Twenty-one members were responsible for about $1 billion in earmarks, or financing for pet projects, according to data lawmakers were required to disclose for the first time this year. Each asked for more than $20 million for businesses mostly in their districts, ranging from major military contractors to little known start-ups.
The list is topped by the veteran earmark champions Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is the chairman of the powerful defense appropriations subcommittee, and Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, the top Republican on the panel, who asked for $166 million and $117 million respectively. It also includes $92 million in requests from Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, a committee member who is under federal investigation for his ties to a lobbying firm whose clients often benefited from his earmarks.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, requested $32 million in earmarks, while Steny H. Hoyer, the majority leader, asked for $26 million for projects in the $459.6 billion defense bill, the largest of the appropriations bills that go through Congress.
As promised when they took control of Congress in January, House Democratic leaders cut in half from last year the value of earmarks in the bill, as they did in the other 11 agency spending measures. But some lawmakers complained that the leadership failed to address what it had called a “culture of corruption” in which members seek earmarks to benefit corporate donors. Earmarks have been a recurring issue in recent Congressional scandals, most recently the 2005 conviction of Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California, for accepting bribes from defense contractors.
“Pork hasn’t gone away at all,” said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, an earmark critic who cites the “circular fund-raising” surrounding many of them. “It would be wonderful if this was a partisan issue, with Republicans on the right side, but it is really not. Many of these companies use money appropriated through earmarks to turn around and lobby for more money. Some of them are just there to receive earmarks.”
Congressional earmarks are for programs that are not competitively bid , and the Bush administration has complained that they waste taxpayer dollars and skew priorities from military needs, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terror.
Thomas E. Mann, a Congressional scholar and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, though, sees the costs of earmarks as less of a problem than their potential for abuse.
“The fiscal fallout of earmarks is trivial,” he said. But they can lead to “conflicts of interest, the irrational and unconstructive allocation of resources, or their use by Congressional leaders as carrots and sticks to buy votes for larger measures that clearly lack majority support on the merits.”
The House version of the military bill includes 1,337 earmarks totaling $3 billion, the most Congressional earmarks in any of the spending bills passed this year. A conference committee is now reconciling House and Senate versions. The Senate added $5 billion in earmarks, but it is difficult to determine the sponsors because it has no disclosure rules.
About half of the House military earmarks go to universities, military bases and other public institutions; the other half to businesses and nonprofits. For the first time, members submitted written requests for each project and statements attesting that they had no personal financial interests in them. Previously, earmarks often were inserted anonymously. The New York Times analysis of earmarks used data compiled by the Washington-based watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense along with campaign contribution and lobbying records.
Democrats consider earmark reform a success, since they have significantly reduced their cost and brought “disclosure so constituents can see what their members have asked for,” said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi. “That’s one of the things we wanted to change, to bring more openness.” But the House Republican Conference contends that Democrats still use earmarks as a secretive slush fund to reward contributors.
Mr. Murtha has drawn much attention this year, first as he bitterly opposed the legislation requiring disclosure of earmarks, then continued his habit of submitting dozens of requests, most benefiting his hometown of Johnstown, Pa. (He asked for 47 earmarks.) Two Republicans said he threatened to block them from getting any earmarks when they questioned one of his requests. “You’re not going to get any, now or forever,” he warned Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who eventually received a written apology from the Pennsylvania congressman.
The Republican Conference chairman, Adam H. Putman of Florida, said Mr. Murtha’s behavior has been “like watching a throwback in time.”
“He’s a classic old-bull appropriator, basically showing a level of arrogance in which he breezily dismisses House rules, dismisses public inquiry and defies the spirit of disclosure,” Mr. Putnam said.
About $111 million of Mr. Murtha’s earmarks are for businesses and nonprofits closely aligned with him. He recruits defense firms and jobs to his economically depressed district and often pushes earmarks for them.
“I don’t make apologies for having earmarks,” Mr. Murtha, who declined to be interviewed for this article, told members in August. “When we see something that we think is not as valuable as something else is, we change it.”
Firms benefiting from Mr. Murtha’s help have given at least $437,000 to his campaign since 2005, with about $110,000 streaming in just before this year’s March 16 request deadline.
Some of Mr. Murtha’s earmarks are relatively small amounts for companies trying to gain a foothold in defense contracting, but few details about their projects are provided. KDH Defense Systems of Johnstown makes Navy body armor and Army elbow pads in a converted bra factory, and Mr. Murtha asked for a $2 million earmark to help the company improve its bulletproof vests. Another earmark would provide $3 million for KDH to develop a “waterways threat detection system.”
The company’s lobbying firm is KSA Consulting, which employed Mr. Murtha’s younger brother, Kit, until 2006. The firm has contributed $4,000 to Mr. Murtha’s campaign since 2005.
Eight companies on Mr. Murtha’s earmark list use a different lobbyist, the PMA Group, whose principals include Paul Magliochetti, a former aide to the defense appropriations subcommittee. The firm took in $840,000 in fees this year from those clients. PMA and its employees have given $58,600 to Mr. Murtha’s campaign since 2005, according to contribution records.
Mr. Murtha included four earmarks worth $10 million for Concurrent Technologies Corporation, a Johnstown-based nonprofit run by major contributors that has won $226 million in earmarks since 2004, according to figures compiled by the taxpayers watchdog group. Concurrent also relies on other lawmakers for support, getting $8 million more in earmarks, including one worth $1.5 million from Mr. Young, whose district in Florida has a Concurrent office. Mr. Young said the company did valuable work for Special Forces.
A Concurrent spokeswoman, Mary T. Bevan, said it was premature to discuss specific earmarks. “Congressionally directed funding is a small part of CTC’s overall revenues,” she said in an e-mail message.
In recent weeks, Concurrent has drawn attention, along with its sister operation, Commonwealth Research Institute, over whether Commonwealth paid a contract official for a no-show job while he awaited approval for an Air Force post. The man, Charles D. Riechers, died in an apparent suicide after a Congressional committee raised questions about the payments.
Mr. Young requested earmarks for 51 projects totaling $117 million. All but 15 requests benefit defense firms.
The Florida congressman has collected about $150,000 in contributions since 2005 from companies for which he earmarked projects in this year’s bill. Unlike Mr. Murtha, he received only one contribution — a $2,000 donation from the political action committee of DRS Technologies — in the days before the earmark deadline. A DRS spokesman said the company’s PAC bought a ticket to a Young fund-raiser.
Mr. Young said that his earmark numbers were high because as ranking subcommittee member, he also seeks earmarks on behalf of other Republicans.
He said he made requests only after “personal contacts to the various agencies” to make sure the projects were legitimate. “I want to make sure we are not putting money into something the Pentagon does not feel they need,” he said.
Mr. Lewis, whose relationship with a lobbying firm is now under federal scrutiny, got $85,500 from six companies for which he sponsored earmarks. Science Applications International Corporation, which received a $4 million earmark, donated $5,000 two weeks before the earmark deadline.
Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Hoyer each had 10 earmarks in the bill. Five of Ms. Pelosi’s earmarks went to companies in her district, as did six of Mr. Hoyer’s.
Ryan Alexander, director of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the public deserved disclosure of the cost and purpose of each earmark. It is important, she said, to judge earmarked projects against other priorities, “particularly in a time of two wars and so many demands on our resources.”
Barclay Walsh contributed reporting.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/washington/04earmarks.html) Company