Reply #10: Um... You Might Wanna Read This First...

[WillyT]

Trading Votes for Pork Across the House Aisle

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: October 2, 2006

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — For more than a decade, Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania has operated a political trading post in a back corner of the House of Representatives. A gang of about two dozen Democrats mill around his seat. A procession of others walk back to request pet spending projects, known as earmarks. And Republicans come by, asking him to enlist some of those Democrats to join them on close votes. “Whether they get what they want in the bill or they get the votes they are looking for, nobody ever leaves completely disappointed,” said Representative Paul E. Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat often found in what is known as the Murtha corner.

Outside Washington, Mr. Murtha, a Vietnam veteran and longtime hawk, may be best known for his break with the president over the Iraq war last fall. But inside the Capitol, he is best known for turning earmarks into power. As the top Democrat on the House military spending subcommittee, he often delivers Democratic votes to Republican leaders in a tacit exchange for earmarks for himself and his allies.

In the last year, Democratic and Republican floor watchers say, Mr. Murtha has helped Republicans round up enough Democratic votes to narrowly block a host of Democratic proposals: to investigate federal contracting fraud in Iraq, to reform lobbying laws, to increase financing for flood control, to add $150 million for veterans’ health care and job training, and to exempt middle-class families from the alternative minimum tax.

In one case that particularly irked Democratic partisans, Mr. Murtha led three others in voting against a politically vulnerable Louisiana Democrat’s proposal to divert money intended to be spent on base closings to research prosthetic limbs for veterans. It failed by one vote.

For their “nays” on that and other matters, all four Democrats were rewarded. In the weeks after the vote, they claimed credit for a total of more than $250 million in earmarks in the 2006 appropriations bills. Mr. Murtha alone brought home about $80 million for his district and $120 million for his state, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group that tracks such projects.

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Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/washington/02murtha.html?ei=5070&en=a4c8cfe0b5881989&ex=1160539200&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1160446077-1vMXmCvj4JSPZkiKzfIkBA

I like some of what Murtha has done recently, but I don't want him as the leader of our party in the house.

:shrug: