« previous | MUCK HOME | next »
Watchdog Calls for Investigation of GOP Rep's Mucky Earmark
Hopefully we're about to get closer to learning how Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) $10 million Coconut Road earmark made its famous post-vote change. A Washington watchdog group filed a complaint today with the House ethics committee asking for an investigation into the drastic edit, calling it "an extraordinary case of the House of Representatives’ integrity being undermined."
You can read the complaint here.
Ryan Alexander, executive director for the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, said her group filed the request for an investigation because in reviewing thousands of earmarks, they have never come across one that was altered after a Congressional vote.
"We don't have any information that this has ever happened before," Alexander said. "We thought this was extraordinary enough that it was worth asking someone to get to the bottom of it. The ethics committee is in the position to do that, to get the relevant information from committee staff and members of Congress."
Initially, Congress approved a bill that would have given Florida $10 million for a highway widening project, but as we've explained before, during a 13-day window between the bill passing Congress and the President signing it into law, the earmark changed. It was the only such change among 6,000 earmarks in a pork-filled bill. The new Coconut Road wording redirected the money to a project that would be a boon to a real estate developer and major campaign contributor of Young's.
The timing of the change could mean that the earmark or the transportation bill itself may not have the effect of law, the watchdog group alleges in its complaint:
The actions taken by Rep. Young’s staff to change an earmark after final Congressional approval is an apparent violation of Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, that provides, “Every Bill shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate,” before it becomes a law.
The surreptitious change could also be a violation of House rules, if it turns out that an enrolling clerk worked under the direction of a Transportation Committee staff member. The group says one House rule is very clear on the issue: “the enrolling clerk should make no change, however unimportant, in the text of a bill to which the House has agreed.”
The story of what exactly happened behind the scenes to change the Coconut Road has remained a mystery.
Comments (16)
SeeDee wrote on September 26, 2007 5:47 PM:That a U.S. Representative, elected by the voters of the State of Alaska to represent them would insert an 'earmark' for the benefit of a real estate developer in the State of Florida and that a sizeable 'campaign donation' was given by that real estate developer to the 'U.S. Representative' from a far-away State, is blatant BRIBERY.
Why aren't both the crooked Representative and the crooked briber in jail?...regardless of the suspicious circumstances of the handling of the bill before it was signed into law....
CAROLYN ACKMANN wrote on September 26, 2007 6:20 PM:Indeed, why are they not in jail? Think how crooked our politicians must be that they only follow up on sex activity. I am so disappointed. Ha! and, how, I ask, does that make me any different than the 65% of intelligent voters?
ic wrote on September 26, 2007 6:40 PM:Funny thing is nobody investigates Murtha's, or Feinstein's 4 billion earmarks. Their earmarks are as sleezy and as indefensible as the Rep's, no?
Nony wrote on September 26, 2007 6:50 PM:SeeDee,
Kevin Hayden wrote on September 26, 2007 6:51 PM:Trust me, there's a bunch of people who think like you on this one, on both sides of the aisle.
Depressingly, it seems as though when one is elected to congress, a few million here and there no longer seems like a lot of money to spend on unimportant projects.
No, ic, because earmarks are legal before a vote. After a vote, it's potentially forgery and certainly fraud.
SeeDee wrote on September 26, 2007 7:03 PM:And, too, how many of Murtha's and/or Feinstein's 'earmarks' were directed to projects as far away from their home districts/states as Florida is from Alaska.
ic attempts to use, once again, the thoroughly worn-out, totaly depleted, utterly trite excuse that some Democrat 'did it, too;.
I agree that 'earmarks' should be prohibited for all, but ic should heed the Kevin Hayden post.
Tom wrote on September 26, 2007 7:11 PM:Here's a prediction.
It will be found that some Don Young underling changed the wording on the bill. We won't be able to be tie the change definitively to Don Young's little pudgy fingers. He will feign surprise and outrage that someone changed his earmark from widening a road to 'The Coconut Road earmark'. Fox news will second the motion and no Democrat will have the gumption to call for Don Young's head.
We must keep in mind that if this was really the case, Don Young would have been crying foul from the moment it first came to light that the earmark was changed. 'Boohoo someone changed my earmark.' He did and still doesn't think anything will come of this.
Tom wrote on September 26, 2007 7:14 PM:Oops.
He didn't and still doesn't think anything will come of this. Sorry about mixing my tenses.
heh wrote on September 26, 2007 10:44 PM:about all Don Young gestures is the middle finger when asked about it. He knows he's caught. Ted Stevens and jr. Stevens --all in the family, don't you know.
The whole state of Alaska is run by crooks.
dweb wrote on September 26, 2007 11:15 PM:It sure is fascinating when you realize that Tom Delay got booted while the Republicans were in power, but now that the Democrats are in charge....not so much. Essentially there is virtually nothing you can do today which will get the ethics committee to get involved....testimony that you received bribes, testimony that you arranged to have an earmark inserted after a bill passed, testimony that you inserted language in a bill which deprived your colleagues of a long-standing Senatorial privilege (Spector and USA appointments), pandering in men's rooms at airports.....NOTHING.
My memory seems to remember someone named Pelosi came into power pledging to clean up the swamp. Now all I can see is alligators from both parties.
Porgee wrote on September 26, 2007 11:42 PM:Seems to me too many people still hold the belief that we are a country that is guided by the constitution. I truly hope I am wrong but this is another case of those who really control the 3 branches of our government are not going to let their important legislative member be sent away easily. Representative Young tows the line and votes the way he is told to.
Nony Mouse wrote on September 27, 2007 12:13 AM:Earmarks can have a laudable goal. They can attempt to insure that the most pressing 'local' needs of an area are met, even if that need isn't always obvious from a 'national' systemic level.
anonymouse wrote on September 27, 2007 1:26 AM:At least that's the theory.
Unfortunately in dreary reality, it means that people try to name things after themselves as opposed to keeping everything running. And the "reform" bill won't let us dig into who is marking how much for whom.
And Tom, if Young actually claims surprise, that will be new. Not so long ago, he'd have been indignant that anyone would even ask about it. Financial conservatives don't like the guy for obvious reasons.
"Porgee wrote on September 26, 2007 11:42 PM:"
I agree with Porgee...
We no longer accept the Constitution as authority. Since the mobs have moved from New York and Chicago to Washington... there is no rule of law. The mobsters will first protect their own, but if cornered they will all protect each other.
This could be stopped if the voters (that's us) get angry enough to vote NO current representatives back into office. Anything else will only tell these guys they can continue to get away with their behavior.
Too bad it won't happen...
Ed*ard Teller wrote on September 27, 2007 2:45 AM:Ironic that Laura neglects to mention in the above article her own article of one week ago which highlighted Diane Benson's call for the same action from the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct on the 17th of September, on a page which now supports ads for Jake Metcalfe, Benson's Dem challenger in next year's Democratic primary. Metcalfe wanly dismissed her effort last Friday, at a meeting of the Mat-Su Democrats in Wasilla.
In that meeting, an old-time Mat-Su Democrat, a Palmer Colonist from the 1930s, commented to Metcalfe during questions, that the latter candidate, who ran the Alaska Democratic Party during Benson's surprisingly strong 2006 campaign, was a functionary perceived as "almost like the Dick Cheney of the Democratic Party in Alaska..." He questioned Metcalfe's role in the paltry amount of support the Party gave Benson then.
Laura's article from last week:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004233.php
Diane Benson's letter:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/coconut-investigation/
Anonymous wrote on September 27, 2007 11:50 AM:Second that.......
Alaska is run by crooks and pansies
crooks being Republicans and pansies being limp Democrats
no one can touch Ted Stevens Inc in AK while Stevens Jr. made Odai and Qusai Hussein look like mere street corner crack dealers
Charles Nunnelly wrote on September 29, 2007 1:38 PM:There seems to be a great difference between the writers of the Constitution and the POLITICIANS administering it over 200 years later.
Their mental capacitiy and motivation has long gone astray. Thank goodness for the originals and "suffeer poor children" for what has happened.
James Madison argued in Federalist Paper #51 that government must be based upon a realistic view of human nature:
"But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
(Probe, Kirby Amderson)
We are in the beginning of another election and what is the ESSENTIAL element? MONEY! If that had been the case instead of reason and logic in forming a new nation, the United States would not exist and our military would be wearing RED uniforms.
IF OUR GOVERNMENT CANNOT CONTROL ITSELF, there is little hope of controlling anything. That has risen from the ashes of decent human nature greatly in the past few decades. A young lady leaning out the window of a foreign nation years ago, "Hey Joe, two dolla." Our politicians have upped the price.