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"Don't Mess With Another Appropriator's Pet Project" rule.
Democrats campaign that the Republicans abused the appropriations process and they were gonna take control of the public's money and spend it only for the public good.
Looks like nothing has changed from the previous regime.
On a side note: Tiahrt is a spineless twit.
Quote:
Tiahrt vote on project irks Murtha
By Alexander Bolton
May 08, 2007
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) exploded at a colleague on the Appropriations defense subcommittee, Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), on the House floor last week after Tiahrt voted in a private meeting to cut $23 million from a project in Murtha’s district.
By voting to shut down the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) in Murtha’s district, Tiahrt violated an unspoken rule of the Appropriations Committee: Don’t mess with your fellow appropriators’ projects. This is especially important when the project belongs to the chairman of a powerful subcommittee.
Murtha vented his anger against Tiahrt for voting last Wednesday to kill the center in Johnstown, Pa., by unleashing a loud, finger-jabbing, spittle-spraying piece of his mind, according to lawmakers who witnessed it. Murtha threatened to withdraw support from a defense project associated with Boeing that would convert commercial aircraft into military refueling tankers. Such a move could create big problems for the project because Murtha is chairman of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, which allocates all defense spending.
The tanker project is vital to Tiahrt’s district, which includes Wichita, home to a Boeing plant that would help assemble the planes. Over the past three years, Boeing has been the second-biggest federal contractor in Tiahrt’s district, selling $1.1 million worth of services to the federal government since 2004, according to FedSpending.org, a website that tracks government contracts.
Tiahrt, who once worked for Boeing, estimates that the tanker project could create 800 to 1,000 local jobs. In January, Tiahrt triumphantly announced: “Boeing will locate the KC-X finishing center in Wichita if Boeing is successful in winning the air refueling tanker contract with the United States Air Force.”
Both Tiahrt’s and Murtha’s projects have come under intense scrutiny in recent years.
The Pentagon’s attempt to lease tankers from Boeing for $30 billion resulted in investigations by Congress and the Defense Department’s inspector general and eventually led to a former Air Force procurement official going to jail for negotiating with Boeing over the tankers while also jockeying for a job at the company.
In 2005, Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), then chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called it “the most significant defense procurement mismanagement in contemporary history.”
A tanker contract with Boeing is still possible. But the controversy has forced Boeing to compete for the deal with a team lead by Northrop Grumman and EADS North America.
Murtha’s project has also faced criticism.
President Bush recently set aside $16 million in his proposed budget to close the Drug Intelligence Center, which employs nearly 400 people in Murtha’s hometown. Last year, the House Government Reform Committee also called for its shutdown.
“NDIC was never able to fulfill its original mission of centralizing and coordinating drug intelligence, given its remote location and the unwillingness of the other Federal agencies to contribute significant information,” the panel concluded in its report, which described the center’s budget as “an expensive and duplicative use of scarce federal drug enforcement resources.”
Many projects in the intelligence authorization bill escape public notice because the bill is marked up in secrecy, and some projects are included in classified addenda. This has prompted Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), an outspoken fiscal conservative, to ask Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to set up a special task force to investigate secret earmarks in the intelligence bill.
Critics of NDIC say it largely replicates the work of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s El Paso Intelligence Center, which is located at the frontlines of the drug war along the Mexican-American border.
Those critics include Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who last week introduced an amendment during a closed-door mark-up of the intelligence authorization bill that would have cut $23 million from NDIC, leaving it with just enough money to close down and transfer its essential operations to other federal facilities.
When that proposal failed on a party-line vote, Rogers offered a second amendment directing the Justice Department’s inspector general to conduct an audit of the effectiveness of the Drug Intelligence Center. Such a report could have embarrassed its supporters by agreeing with the Bush administration that a center in Johnstown is unnecessary.
“This should not be about a member’s interest, it should be about national interest,” said Rogers in an interview. Rogers said the Drug Enforcement Administration has a hiring freeze in place and that the money used to run the Drug Intelligence Center could be used to hire 350 new agents.
Tiahrt voted for both amendments, but he is the only Republican on both the House Select Committee on Intelligence and the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, which Murtha chairs.
“Certainly in the Appropriations Committee members mark their territory and don’t expect anyone encroaching,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, which describes itself as a nonpartisan budget watchdog group.
“You stick together and you vote for all the appropriations bills and you support other members,” he said. “You’re not supposed to go into somebody else’s sandbox and mess with their toys. You’re supposed to stay in your own sandbox and people will leave you alone.”
When confronted on the House floor Wednesday night, Tiahrt explained that he was unaware that the project was one of Murtha’s, since Murtha doesn’t sit on the intelligence panel. But Murtha set him straight, swiftly and firmly.
Luckily for Tiahrt and Boeing, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the second-ranking member of the defense appropriations subcommittee, was nearby during Murtha’s blowup and helped smooth things over, said witnesses. Dicks is one of Boeing staunchest allies in the House. Along with voters in Tiahrt’s district, Dicks’ constituents would be big winners if Boeing wins the tanker competition. Boeing would build the aircraft in Everett, Washington, which is within commuting distance of Dicks’ district.
For his part, Tiahrt says the loud flap with Murtha was merely a misunderstanding and declined to discuss it.
“It was a little misunderstanding,” said Tiahrt. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
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We need to sit down as a nation and deconstruct the entire process of getting elected and re-elected.
Popular vote should wipe out the electoral college, Federal funding of all federal elections.
Term limits:
6 years for a President, one term.
10 years for a Senator, one term.
4 years for a Representative, one term.
Absolutely no re-elections period.
Recall elections allowed for all with a pretty high bar for getting the ball rolling.
__________________
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Sorry Dj, This report is supposed to be serious? If this story were anymore dramatic and partisan... I'd puke. This MUST have been written by a right wing nutjob for a right wing nutjob paper/website.
Sorry Dj, This report is supposed to be serious? If this story were anymore dramatic and partisan... I'd puke. This MUST have been written by a right wing nutjob for a right wing nutjob paper/website.
A "rightwing nutjob" would have portrayed Tiahrt as this:
Warning for those that can't handle the truth - pretend this article was written by two "right wing nutjobs" for a "right wing" paper and it will be easier to digest.
Quote:
In the Democratic Congress, Pork Still Gets Served
'Phonemarking' Is Among Ways Around Appropriations Process
By John Solomon and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 24, 2007; A01
When the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives passed one of its first spending bills, funding the Energy Department for the rest of 2007, it proudly boasted that the legislation contained no money earmarked for lawmakers' pet projects and stressed that any prior congressional requests for such spending "shall have no legal effect."
Within days, however, lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) began directly contacting the Energy Department. They sought to secure money for their favorite causes outside of the congressional appropriations process -- a practice that lobbyists and appropriations insiders call "phonemarking."
"I understand some of your offices have begun to receive requests from some Congressional offices asking that the department continue to fund programs or activities that received earmarked funds in prior years," department chief of staff Jeffrey Kupfer wrote in a stern Feb. 2 memo, warning agency officials to approve money only for "programs or activities that are meritorious."
The number of earmarks, in which lawmakers target funds to specific spending projects, exploded over the past decade from about 3,000 in 1996 to more than 13,000 in 2006, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Most earmarks made it into appropriations bills or their accompanying conference reports without identifying their sponsors. Upon taking control of Congress after November's midterm elections, Democrats vowed to try to halve the number of earmarks, and to require lawmakers to disclose their requests and to certify that the money they are requesting will not benefit them.
But the new majority is already skirting its own reforms.
Perhaps the biggest retreat from that pledge came this week, when House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) told fellow lawmakers that he intends to keep requests for earmarks out of pending spending bills, at least for now.
Obey said the committee will deal with them at the end of the appropriations process in the closed-door meetings between House and Senate negotiators known as conference committees.
Democrats had complained bitterly in recent years that Republicans routinely slipped multimillion-dollar pet projects into spending bills at the end of the legislative process, preventing any chance for serious public scrutiny. Now Democrats are poised to do the same.
"I don't give a damn if people criticize me or not," Obey said.
Obey's spokeswoman, Kirstin Brost, said his intention is not to keep the projects secret. Rather, she said, so many requests for spending were made to the appropriations panel -- more than 30,000 this year -- that its staff has been unable to study them and decide their validity.
"I have to sign off on that stuff," Obey said. "And I'm going to make damn sure that we've done everything we can do to make sure that they're legitimate projects, so that you don't get embarrassed by some idiot who is putting in money for a project that happens to benefit himself and his wife."
Republicans reacted with outrage. "This is a huge step backwards on earmark reform," said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). "As bad as the earmark process is now, this would make it immensely worse."
Phonemarking is another way lawmakers are trying to secure money for projects outside of the new congressional appropriations process by going directly to federal agencies.
After the House finished with the Energy Department spending bill, Reid sent a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman on Feb. 1, saying that there were no earmarks. Then came a "however."
Reid, as a senator from the electricity-needy West, noted that the legislation set aside $300 million in new money for research in energy efficiency and renewable energy and suggested that some money be used to reverse the administration's original plan to end its geothermal-energy research program.
Reid demanded that the administration fund the geothermal program at 2006 levels or higher. "Geothermal energy has the potential to cleanly and renewably satisfy the new electricity needs of the West," he wrote.
Reid also asked the administration to expand a federal loan program to include geothermal research projects. Other lawmakers, from both parties, inundated the Energy Department with similar requests.
Democrats slammed such practices when Republicans ruled the House, but such calls and letters have not let up in the Democratic Congress, executive branch officials said.
"Certainly, we have heard from various members of Congress this year to express their support for various projects and groups seeking funding from the department," said Energy Department spokeswoman Anne Womack Kolton. "There's no difference from previous years."
Another key Democratic reform requires House members seeking earmarks to certify that neither they nor their spouses have any financial interest in the project.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did just that when she requested $25 million for a project to improve the waterfront in her home district of San Francisco. Her request did not note that her family owns interests in four buildings near the proposed Pier 35 project.
Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi, said that any suggestion of a conflict of interest is "ridiculous." He said that Pelosi was passing along a spending request from the Port of San Francisco and that she would not benefit from it.
One of the bonanza areas for earmarks traditionally involves Pentagon spending and authorization bills. To help lawmakers make their requests efficiently, House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) sent out a two-page tip sheet, along with several sample letters and forms. "Provide all necessary information on the attached form to ensure full consideration of the request," the guidelines urged. Skelton set a deadline of noon on March 15 for requests.
Democrats are not alone in seeking new money for pet projects. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) has made one of the biggest earmark requests in the new Congress, seeking $2.4 billion to build 10 more C-17 planes -- which the Pentagon has said it does not need.
Such planes would create work at Boeing and other military contractors, benefiting lawmakers' constituents in several states, including a C-17 assembly line near Rohrabacher's district.
"The only ones playing politics in this decision are those unelected officials of the Department of Defense who are trying to keep everyone happy by spending billions of dollars on ancient aircraft when more modern aircraft is available," Rohrabacher said.
Veteran appropriations watchers say the new Congress has also been playing with wording to disguise some earmarks or to create the appearance that less special-interest spending is occurring.
For instance, a new emergency spending bill for the Iraq war passed by the House this month had no specific earmarks, but it included a clause declaring that all the projects lawmakers had included in a previously vetoed bill were, in effect, included.
Likewise, the House Appropriations Committee report accompanying the Iraq supplemental spending bill vetoed by President Bush boldly declared: "This bill, as reported, contains no congressional earmarks, limited tax benefits, or limited tariff benefits." But it set aside money for pet projects including $25 million for spinach, $60 million for salmon fisheries and $5 million for aquaculture.
"Absolutely nothing has changed," said the Center for Defense Information's Winslow T. Wheeler, a Senate appropriations and national security aide who worked for both Democrats and Republicans over three decades before stepping down in 2002.
"The rhetoric has changed but not the behavior, and the behavior has gotten worse in the sense that while they are pretending to reform things, they are still groveling in the trough."
Last edited by Djaughe; May 25th, 2007 at 08:06 AM.
Reason: getting rid of: var comments_url = "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052301782_Comments.
Both parties completely suck. I hate both of them.
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We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.
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