Rep. Jack Murtha does like those earmarks!
Reports the Washington Post:
Tucked into the voluminous congressional plan for U.S. military
spending next year is $160 million intended to help Mexico's
police buy U.S.-made first-responder radios.
It is a major purchase that one radio manufacturer got rolling,
12 members of Congress formally requested and a powerful
defense appropriations chairman championed, according to
records and congressional staff members. But details of the
plan to pump Pentagon money into Mexico's crime-fighting
efforts are cloaked in vaguely worded language in the House
defense bill. The program is one of many congressional requests
in the measure, which also includes 1,080 projects worth $2.7
billion tacked on at lawmakers' request.
The language in the $636 billion bill, which the House
Appropriations defense subcommittee approved last week,
discloses neither the specific purpose of the radio project nor
the dozen lawmakers who asked Chairman John
P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to include it.
Members of Congress are required under new rules to disclose
all requests they make to direct federal money to pet projects,
but the radio-buying program is not technically a
congressionally directed "earmark." Instead, according to the
panel, the item is classified as "program support," which means
that the requesting lawmakers do not have to publicly claim it.
"It kind of makes a mockery of the disclosure requirements we
have," said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight
Foundation, a watchdog group. "They will disclose the little
things, the $1 million projects, but when you have the
big-ticket items, you don't have members willing to take
responsibility for those."
About the Author
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the Senior Fellow in International Religious Persecution at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).
