Earmarks have become a key issue in the August 26 GOP primary for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat. Little wonder, considering the incumbent is Don Young of Coconut Road fame.  Tuesday, the local Chamber of Commerce held a forum for congressional candidates where Sean Parnell, Alaska’s lieutenant governor and a challenger to Young for the nomination, called for a cleanup of the earmark process via transparency and openness. The Club for Growth, one of the most effective keepers of the low tax and small government orthodoxy within the GOP, has endorsed Parnell. Not only that, they’re spending $350,000 to air throughout the state a powerful ad highlighting the Coconut Road earmark and calling Young “just another Washington politician.”  In 11 days Alaska Republicans will decide whether to continue or end the career of one of the top champions of the under-the-table earmark process. I wonder whether we will see more examples of this cropping up.

Hat tip: Change Congress

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Murdock, Hannibal, Face, and B.A. Baracus? Not that A-Team. Josh Marshall got his hands on the “Intern’s Survival Guide” for the office of Alaska Rep. Don Young, currently under investigation for, among other things, inserting an earmark for the Coconut Road in Florida. The key to the survival guide is the list of “A-Team” lobbyists who can talk to anyone in the office, at any time. The list includes Coconut Road lobbyist Rick Alcade. The “A-Team” section of the guide ends with this sentence, “I recommend looking up who they are.”

(FYI: Don Young was elected to Congress the same year that the fictional A-Team was convicted of a crime they didn’t commit: 1972.)

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Do lawmakers really want to get to the bottom of the Coconut Road earmark? It looks more and more doubtful by the minute. The story of Coconut Road is one of those earmark stories where a congressman, Alaska Rep. Don Young, inserted an earmark for a campaign contributor in Florida for a project that the local community, in Florida mind you, not Alaska, did not want. Even worse, the earmark was inserted after the transportation bill it was attached to had passed Congress. Bills can’t be signed by the President if they’ve been edited after passage. That’s against the rules, laws, and the Constitution. So yesterday, lawmakers in the Senate decided they were going to pursue action against those who inserted the earmark language after bill passage.

The Senate considered two proposals, one to create a joint House-Senate investigative committee authored by Sen. Tom Coburn, the other to direct the Justice Department to open an investigation pushed by Sen. Barbara Boxer. In the end, the Boxer plan won as many Democrats felt that the Senate initiating an probe of the House would create constitutional issues, potentially violating the Speech and Debate Clause. While I cannot know if supporters of the Boxer plan actually desire to get to the bottom of this issue, the path they took yesterday shows a lack of seriousness, or a lack of understanding of recent law. By referring to the Justice Department for an investigation, the Senate has not escaped problems of Speech and Debate, they have waded further into this constitutional morass.

Congress only needs to recall the FBI raid on Rep. William Jefferson’s congressional office back in 2006. When the FBI entered the office and took documents, both Nancy Pelosi and then-Speaker Dennis Hastert denounced the raid as a violation of the Speech and Debate clause and the separation of powers. Jefferson sued the Justice Department in court over their violation of these constitutional barriers meant to protect the independence of the branches. Guess what? Jefferson won his case in Federal Court and the Supreme Court refused to take the government’s appeal. In accordance with the ruling, the executive branch cannot obtain materials from congressional offices without prior consent. No amount of subpoenas will matter. While this does make congressional offices into potential Chriastiania’s for corruption, it is the law as determined by the courts.

So, how can the Justice Department investigate the office of Rep. Don Young if he refuses to turn over documents? They can’t. Thus, I return to my initial question: are they really serious about investigating Coconut Road? And in referring the investigation to the Justice Department is not Congress deferring essential responsibilities to the executive branch?

The Point of Order blog, which explains the Speech and Debate issues in more depth, gets a bit harsh over the lack of self-respect Congress apparently has for itself:

Leaving the legal technicalities aside, it is difficult to imagine what could be more offensive to separation of powers generally and the Speech or Debate Clause in particular than for the Congress to call upon the executive branch to investigate the very core of the legislative process, namely how a bill is physically prepared for enrollment. It is astounding that the same Congress with one breath can decry the “politicization” of the Department of Justice and, with the other, outsource its own constitutional responsibilities to that Department.

The only real path to a full investigation would be if the House Ethics Committee opened an active probe into the matter. Speaker Pelosi, like a child dipping a toe in cold swimming pool, issued this statement, "I think that’s something the ethics committee should look at." Someone in the House needs to step up and file a complaint as they will not act on the multiple complaints filed by CREW, or any other outside group.

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Rep. Don Young has been on the hot seat ever since he sponsored the infamous Bridge to Nowhere earmark. Since then he has come under investigation for more things than any other sitting member of Congress. Young faces an FBI investigation into his participation in fishing and golfing events with VECO oil executives; he is receiving scruting for the hiring of his former aide Mark Zachares, who has pled guilty, by Jack Abramoff; and fellow Republicans are seeking an investigation into his inclusion of an earmark for Coconut Road in Florida - which happens to be a long ways from Alaska. In the face of all these difficulties Young sat down with reporters to discuss his reelection campaign, but reporters wanted to talk about something else. If you want to see what an arrogant stone wall looks like, you should follow the link and watch this interview. It’s a doozy.

Don Young’s KTVA Interview Video. 

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Last Friday, PBS’ NOW with David Brancaccio covered the VECO Alaska oil corruption scandal. If you’re new to the scandal that has enveloped these non-continental politicians and is creeping up on Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young this video is the place to start. Below is a 6 minute clip from the full video. Watch the full video here.

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Looks like our colleagues over at Taxpayers for Common Sense are getting fed up about earmarks. In the case of Rep. Don Young’s $10 million earmark to benefit a Florida political contributor, they have filed a complaint with the House Ethics Committee. TCS raises the question over how the earmark found its way onto the 2005 transportation bill after it had passed both houses of Congress.

TCS has reviewed thousands of earmarks, and they have never before found one that was edited in such a manner. During the 13-day interval from when Congress passed the bill and the president signed it, the wording of the bill changed. Wording outlining a $10 million highway widening project was turned by a stealth editor into a project to build a highway overpass. A project that would provide a windfall for Young’s Florida real estate fundraiser.

In the complaint, TCS makes the case that the timing of the earmark alteration, coming after it was voted on, makes it invalid and does not have the effect of law. You would think that the Ethics Committee would act to guarantee that Congress retains the act of appropriation and not relinquish the constitutional duty to heaven knows who.

Sunshine…openness and transparency have the effect of keeping people honest. It’s easier than ever to shine light on the process of earmarks – even with the new loopholes discovered in the Senate provisions, but we have much more work to do in order to have true openness, evidenced by the gutting of ethics rules by the Senate earlier this summer. Hopefully the bloggers and the MSM will stick with us in this fight.

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Check out this Bill Moyers expose on earmarking in Congress (unfortunately this is not the whole video). Steve Ellis, from Taxpayers for Commonsense, is interviewed and the Sunlight Foundation’s earmarking data is used in a graph at the beginning of the video.

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FBI agents in Alaska, armed with search warrants, descended without warning Thursday at the offices of several Alaskan lawmakers in what appears to be a major investigation involving VECO, the oil field service company that has long been one the most generous political contributors to Alaska politicians.

Among the offices searched were that of State Senate President Ben Stevens, the son of US Senator Ted Stevens, and an important political ally of VECO in the state legislature. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Stevens has closer connections to the company than simply receiving campaign contributions:

In disclosures he was required to file as a legislator, Stevens said he was paid $243,000 over the last five years as a "consultant" to Veco. Whenever he was asked to describe what he did for the money, Stevens refused to answer. The company also refused to say.

Over the years, VECO has also been a big supporter of Alaska’s congressional delegation. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the company ranks as the top overall contributor to Rep. Don Young, with over $125,000 in contributions since 1989. It ranks as the sixth biggest contributor to Sen. Ted Stevens over the same period, with a total of $45,750. It’s also been the top contributor to Alaska’s junior Senator Lisa Murkowski, with $44,250 in contributions since 2002.

In the current election cycle, VECO is the second-biggest Alaska contributor to federal campaigns, with $71,000 in donations so far this year. It ranked as the state’s number one contributor in each of the last four election cycles.

So far the FBI has been mum on the purpose of Thursday’s raids, except to say that they executed about 20 search warrants in Anchorage, Juneau and three other Alaska communities. Stay tuned.

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The three congressmen that Neil Volz said he and Jack Abramoff worked with issued their expected denials. The congressmen, Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Steve LaTourette (R-OH), and Don Young (R-AK), issued statements through spokesmen. Only LaTourette and Capito responded (Young’s spokesman said that the congressman was unaware of Volz’s testimony):

Deborah Setliff, communications director for LaTourette, said, “The congressman is the former chairman of the Transportation Committee’s Public Buildings Subcommittee. About four years ago, Chairman LaTourette and Chairman Young signed a letter to the GSA encouraging hub-zone business participation in the redevelopment of the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C. Hub-zone businesses, a type of disadvantaged small business, are routinely included in large GSA projects. The congressman supported small, disadvantaged businesses then and still does today, and the policy is good regardless of who is pushing it. He has never supported turning the Old Post Office building into a hotel and supports legislation making it a women’s history museum.”

“Representative Capito had absolutely no knowledge of the phone call that purportedly took place between her former chief of staff and Mr. Volz, ” said her spokesman Jordan Stoick. “She was not aware of any contact with GSA, nor has she ever consented to her name being used in any way to assist in obtaining information from GSA on this matter.”

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Neil Volz brought out his pointer finger today as he testified at the tiral of David Safavian. According to the Associated Press, Volz stated that he "received assistance from several Republican congressmen including, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, and Rep. Steven LaTourette, R-Ohio." Denials of wrong doing by spokesmen for the four congressmen are forthcoming. "The congressman did not have a legislative relationship with that lobbyist!"

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