Sen. Ted Stevens has served as senator from Alaska for most of his life and nearly all of the state’s existence. Stevens greatest accomplishments have been as a patronage chief; bringing home federal dollars for Alaska and protecting and expanding the extraction industries in the state, particularly the oil industry. In many ways, Stevens is Alaska. It comes as no surprise that Stevens would run his current reelection campaign on a message that says, “Without Ted, we’re toast.”

As some have noted already, Stevens - a “patronage-distributing warlord” - may be a dying breed of politician. There are others who still exclusively practice this kind of politics, most notably Alaska’s lone representative Don Young, but few to the degree that Stevens has over the years. Stevens’ undying support for earmarking and the oil industry may have brought on investigative scrutiny and, ultimately, an indictment. But they also appear to have muddled the water in the investigation, prompting prosecutors to charge Stevens with seemingly lesser felonies - for now. (more…)

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Call it the Opaqueness in Government Act. A provision slipped into H.R. 3074 of the Transportation/Housing and Urban Development Appropriations bill would bar the Department of Transportation from "using any funds from this Act to provide a congressional budget spending any delay public access to the budget justifications–which provide specific descriptions of and reasons to spend taxpayer money on specific projects–for several months after they’re released. Members of the Appropriations Committee, by contrast, would get the documents right away. In other words, congressional appropriators are saying, "Now we see it, now you don’t." Well, it’s not as if average citizens across the country have much of an interest in finding out if adequate funds will be available to maintain the roads and bridges, airports and so on in their own districts… Some more background on the provision is available here.

Meanwhile, the Office of Management and Budget put out a press release (that I can’t seem to find on their site yet) saying that President Bush would veto the bill. Among the reasons cited:

This bill includes nearly all earmarks in report language, and does not cut the cost and number of earmarks by at least half. The bill also contains more than 2,000 earmarks for, among other things, museums, zoos, gardens, gymnasiums, and golf courses, and diverts funds from such priority purposes as housing, low-income families, bridge repairs, and highways. Congressional earmarks divert Federal taxpayer funds to localities without the benefit of a merit-based process, resulting in fewer resources for national priorities or unwarranted spending above fiscally-responsible levels.

Though it’s not tops on their list of reasons to oppose the bill, Christin T. Baker, the Associate Director for Communications at OMB, says that they’re "very concerned this bill takes steps to roll back transparency." Last February, the administration made the budget justifications available to the public soon after it released the President’s budget–you can view Transportation’s 2008 documents here–in prior years, members of the appropriations committee enjoyed a monopoly on that information. Apparently, they prefer the public not to know what they were up to, and want to go back to the old system.

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Wondering who’s getting all the earmarks? Who’s giving them and why? Do earmarks meet pressing needs or pay off political favors? And which are pure pork? EarmarkWatch.org, an innovative new tool from the Sunlight Foundation and Taxpyers for Common Sense, lets you find out for yourself. Using EarmarkWatch.org, you can exercise citizen oversight of Congress. Dig into the 47 earmarks worth $166,500,000 that Rep. John Murtha inserted (and figure out which benefit campaign contributors). Or take a close look at the $100,000 earmark that Sen. David Vitter secured for an organization that promotes creationism in Louisiana schools. Or the $37 million in earmarks that include defense giant Northrop Grumman as a beneficiary. Right now, you can investigate earmarks from the House Defense Appropriations Bill and the House and Senate versions of the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bills. Using a host of online resources, you can find out whether recipients of earmarks hired lobbyists, made campaign contributions to members of Congress, or won federal contracts and grants. You can also add information to eamarks others have researched, or comment on what others have found. EarmarkWatch.org provides you with powerful tools to scrutinize and evaluate thousands of earmarks. To get started, create an account and pick an earmark.

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Andy Roth of the Club for Growth quotes Sen. Robert Byrd on the Senate floor: “Hear me now! There is nothing, nothing, nothing inherently wrong with earmarks.”

Absolutely, Senator, so it would go without saying, one would presume, that no member of Congress could conceivably have any reason to object to taking responsibility for his own earmarks by attaching his or her name to each and every one of them, as well as the name of the beneficiary of the taxpayer largesse.

Does the Senator, in other words, agree that there is nothing, nothing, nothing inherently wrong with transparency and accountability?

Roth is liveblogging the debate at the above link.

There’s also an interesting profile on Porkbusters at National Review; as someone who’s on the email list, I can confirm that this is more or less how it’s operated in the past (although, frankly, the description of it makes it sound a lot more formal than it actually is):

Somebody alerts the blogosphere to a bit of pork-related news (often this is a government-watchdog group like Club for Growth or Citizens Against Government Waste). Maybe Reynolds or pseudonymous co-founder N.Z. Bear sends out an e-mail to the Porkbusters interest list; maybe not. In any case, bloggers who get angry about wasteful spending start pushing the story, prompting constituents to contact their representatives and attracting the attention of the mainstream media. The constituent response and media attention often give enough cover to anti-pork members of Congress that they are able to shame the porkers into voting the right way on important reform bills.

That strikes me as a pretty good model–and certainly suggests why some members would prefer that the public be less than well-informed on what they’re up to…

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What caught my eye in this morning’s Washington Post puff piece on just how much of a maverick Senator-elect James Webb will be was the tidbit that he’s hired Paul J. Reagan, a registered lobbyist and former staffer for Rep. Jim “earmark the s— out of it” Moran. The McGuire Woods LLP bio of Reagan tells us, “In addition to managing Moran’s staff and offices, Paul also handled press and coordinated appropriations issues.” (emphasis added.) Reagan’s new job with Webb will be to “help his boss navigate the intricacies of Washington and Capitol Hill without losing the essence of his personality,” as the Post’s Michael D. Shear effervescently puts it.

I think most longtime Moran observers would agree that the essence of his personality remains intact, while his ability to navigate the intricacies of Washington and Capitol Hill is unparalleled–and while that’s been good for some Moran contributors, it’s not clear the country has benefited. Will Webb follow that pattern?

(Side note: It appears that Reagan backed Harris Miller, Webb’s Democratic primary opponent, in 2006.)

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Robert Novak has more on the backdoor maneuvering and dust-up between Sen. Tom Coburn and Sen. Ted Stevens over the issue of disclosing earmarks that he’d alluded to earlier. Coburn sponsored a measure that would require the Pentagon to issue report cards on the utility and effectiveness of projects earmarked by members of Congress; Stevens didn’t care for the scrutiny. The intra-party squabble doesn’t interest me so much as the bottom line:

The earmark process enables the congressional-industrial complex to fund projects the military does not want. This year’s bill appropriates money to buy 10 unrequested C-17 Globemaster cargo planes from Boeing. It also funds 60 F-22A Raptor stealth fighters, not supported by the Pentagon and opposed by McCain and Sen. John Warner, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman. F-22A appropriations are guaranteed for three years, reducing leverage with contractor Lockheed Martin.

Incredibly, page 336 of the bill’s conference report says that under the new House rule purportedly revealing sponsors of earmarks, there were zero earmarks in this year’s Defense money bill. That suggests the transparency rule is as big a sham as its critics have claimed.

As Novak notes, Taxpayers for Common Sense has found that the bill “included 2,837 parochial and politically motivated earmarks worth $11.2 billion dollars.” Either we can asssume that Congress normally counts earmarks in multiples of 10,000 (and rounded 2,837 to zero), or, as some of us critics claimed, the motive behind he House rule on earmarks–which discloses hardly any earmarks at all–was to create the appearance of reform rather than the substance.

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