Pet projects still abound in D.C.

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 8, 2008 | by Andrew Taylor

"Initially, with great enthusiasm, you fight for your communities," said Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who says he's sworn off earmarks until new reforms are put in place. "But the return is that you have to support the whole process and therefore, you're supporting everyone else's earmarks."

Examples abound of lawmakers winning earmarks for specific companies or institutions, and then receiving campaign contributions from the recipients or their lobbyists.

TPI Composites, a defense contractor, received $2.4 million to develop a new all-composite military vehicle in the 2008 defense spending bill. The benefactor was Rep. David L. Hobson, an Ohio Republican who sits on the House defense appropriations subcommittee. The Columbus Dispatch reports that TPI executives have donated $10,000 to Hobson in recent years and that a TPI lobbyist has contributed $5,000 to his campaigns since 2003.

"I don't look at how much money people have given me," Hobson, who is retiring at the end of this year, told the Dispatch. "I don't care who gives me money. If we don't think (an earmark) is good we won't do it. At some point you have to say to yourself, 'Do I trust the person in this office to do the right thing and stand up and say no at the right time?' People shouldn't have voted for me if they thought I could be bought."

Defense industry executives and their lobbyists are Murtha's biggest campaign donors. DRS Technologies, which has given Murtha more than $29,000 this campaign cycle, has received $30 million in earmarks in fiscal 2008 from the defense subcommittee. Of those, Murtha accounted for $8 million himself, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. The company is based in New Jersey, but its biggest facility is in Murtha's southwestern Pennsylvania district. Within days of a fundraiser in his honor earlier this year, Murtha also received $8,500 from executives of Van Scoyoc Associates, a lobbying firm that represents DRS.

"We receive thousands of funding requests which are vetted by both members and staff. In the end, we recommend projects based strictly on their merit and value to the (Defense) department," said Murtha's spokesman, Matthew Mazonkey.

Earmarks come in countless varieties. Job training programs, grants to police departments, improvements to military bases, renovations to historical buildings and research grants for home- district colleges are just a few. They help pay for food banks and child care centers, sewer systems, roads and bridges, and equipment purchased by the Pentagon.

The most commonly accepted definition of an earmark is a specific project, contract or grant not requested by the president but inserted into one of the annual spending bills. Many of those bills often get consolidated into one.

Earmarks can do a lot of good. About 30,000 victims of leukemia and other blood diseases have received lifesaving bone marrow transplants through a donor registry program that Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., started through an earmark more than 20 years ago.