"Looking at Earmarks: Legislators for Sale?"

Many people defend earmarks as adding only a relatively small amount to the Federal Budget. As a percentage of total expenditures, earmarks may not be terribly significant. As a source of potential corruption and waste, their significance far exceeds the money involved. Furthermore, only in Washington would the sums involved not be considered important.

Defense Industry Daily provides some important information about one of the big players in the earmark scam - the PMA Group. The PMA Group was formed by a former John Murtha aide and is under investigation by the FBI. It is supposed to close its doors at the end of March 2009. According to Defense Industry Daily:

While charging nearly $107 million in lobbying fees, and growing from a
start-up to the 11th largest lobbying firm in the USA at one point, the firm
reportedly dispensed more than $1.5 million in political contributions via
Magliochetti, 9 of his close relatives, and a Political Action Committee he
controlled. Those contributions were made to key House Appropriations committee
members John Murtha [D-PA], James Moran [D-NJ], Peter J. Visclosky [D-IN], and to John Sununu [then R-NH]. Contributions were also made to Mike Doyle [D-PA],
Tim Holden [D-PA], Michael Capuano [D-MA], Sen. Bill Nelson [D-FL], and the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Earmarks allow a Congressperson to require the expenditure of funds for a particular project done by a particular company. It bypasses the entire Congressional budget process and the Federal government procurement process. One Congressperson substitutes him/herself for the entire Congress and Federal procurement system to award a potentially multi-million dollar job to a particular company.

The article reports that "In 2007 alone, PMA clients received some $100 billion in government contracts, an amount that is about 20% of all federal contracts that year. PMA clients also got nearly $300 million in earmarks in a the House Defense Appropriations panel’s spending bill for FY 2008."

Those are huge sums of money. Only a saint would not be tempted to engage in "pay for play" in such circumstances. Only an idiot would think that would not be the case. How many saints are in Congress? Congresspersons must think the voters are all idiots.

AP discovers ethically challenged Democrats.

The Democrats must be having serious ethics issues when the AP writes about the problem. Larry Margasak provides the long list of the ethically challenged Democrats in Washington just during the last 2 months.

He mentions Burris, Murtha, Blagojevich, Rangel, Daschle, Killefer, Geithner, Richardson and Lynn. That's quite a long list for just a short period of time.

From my perspective, the problem appears not to be a Democratic problem any more than the prior issues were a Republican issue. The real problem results from far too much power over far too much money being given to individuals in Washington.

Rather than saying the Democrats are corrupt, we need to change how Washington does business to reduce the temptations of the huge sums of money involved. This suggests the need for a flat tax with no deductions to eliminate legislation creating tax loopholes. It requires the elimination of earmarks.

Earmarks and campaign contributions ...

CQ reports that more than 100 House members secured earmarks for clients of a lobbying firm and received over $1.8 million in campaign contributions from the firm's political action committee and some of its employees. The article doesn't report the campaign contributions provided by employees of the corporate recipients of the earmark funds.

The lobbying firm, PMA Group, has connections to Rep. John Murtha (D. Penn.) To be fair, CQ reports that "Of the 104 lawmakers who lent their names to earmark requests for PMA clients in the fiscal 2008 Pentagon spending law, 91 have, since 2001, received campaign money linked to PMA, either from its political action committee or its employees." Thus, more than 13 did not receive contributions. Again, it must be noted that the report doesn't look at contributions from the employees of the firms receiving the benefit of the earmarks.

Of course, nothing is necessarily illegal in giving or receiving campaign contributions. Also, earmarks are permitted under the present House rules. However, the giving of campaign contributions to obtain a US Senate seat or to receive the benefit of earmarks would seem to have the potential to violate bribery laws.

At a minimum, the entire earmark business raises serious ethical issues. It avoids the protections afforded by the appropriations process and the federal procurement process. It substitutes political connection for merit and price based decisions made in the course of the procurement process.

Not only do we face potential ethical issues involved in campaign cash for earmarks, but there may also be massive waste in unnecessary appropriations being made outside the appropriations process. Perhaps even more damaging and difficult to determine, firms winning political connections and earmarks may be providing inferior products and services to our defense department that may weaken our defenses.