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Requirements matter: Just 83 members disclosed transportation earmark requests
By Bill Allison May 15, 2009 6:48 p.m.Apparently, deadlines do matter. Just 83 House members disclosed their earmark requests for the upcoming transportation reauthorization bill (that last version, SAFETEA-LU, was loaded with Prairie Parkway and Bridge to Nowhere--both of which were earmarks) on the same day that they submitted them to the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.
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Earmark request disclosures: do deadlines make a difference?
By Bill Allison May 13, 2009 4:26 p.m.Adam Hughes of OMB Watch asks a trenchant question in response to a report by Jackie Kucinich in Roll Call. Kucinich notes that Rep. James Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee, which will be overseeing the massive transportation reauthorization bill (the last one, as Taxpayers for Common Sense's Steve Ellis tells Roll Call, contained earmarks for the bridges to nowhere), will have less stringent earmark disclosure rules than the House Appropriations Committee. The latter, chaired by Rep. David Obey, requires members post their earmark requests online before they submit them to the committee. Oberstar, by contrast "set a May 14 deadline for Members to submit requests and encouraged them to post the requests on their Web sites, but he stopped short of setting a mandatory deadline," according to Roll Call. The committee's communications director, Jim Bernard, told Roll Call "We are not giving them a hard deadline [or stipulating] we won't consider them until they are posted. Our style is bit different than Mr. Obey's, but our results will be the same." Hughes asks: Sorry - quick follow-up Mr. Bernard. How exactly is not requiring earmark requests to be disclosed under the transportation reauthorization the same as requiring earmark requests to be disclosed in appropriations bills?
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Roll Call makes PMA Group articles available online
By Bill Allison May 4, 2009 4:31 p.m.In conjunction with the appearance of Paul Singer on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning (his bit starts about 1:03:30 in on the video), Roll Call has put online its amazing body of work tracking the PMA Group, the defunct lobbying firm under federal investigation that, along with its clients, provided oodles of campaign cash to more than 100 members of the House while securing hundreds of millions in earmarks for its clients.
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Political Party Time: More than 170 fundraisers for appropriators (already!) in 2009
By Bill Allison Apr 23, 2009 9:04 p.m.We're just past the end of the first quarter of the current election cycle (with seven more to go before it's all over), but members of the Appropriations Committees in the House and the Senate have already had <a href="http://blog.politicalpartytime.org/2009/04/23/more-than-170-parties-with-appropriators/">more than 170 fundraisers</a>, according to my colleague Nancy Watzman.
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Hill: No campaign cash for Visclosky from former PMA Group clients
By Bill Allison Apr 16, 2009 9:12 p.m.On April 3rd, we noted that Rep. Pete Visclosky, one of the most prolific recipients of campaign cash from and earmarker of federal dollars to PMA Group clients, had requested no earmarks--not a single one--for former clients of the firm for fiscal year FY 2010. Oddly enough, employees and PACs of former PMA Group clients donated nothing to Visclosky's reelection campaign in the first quarter of 2009, according to Roxana Tiron of the Hill.
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Better links to earmark requests...
By Bill Allison Apr 15, 2009 9:48 p.m....available here.
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Download TCS's earmark request spreadsheet
By Bill Allison Apr 8, 2009 2:55 p.m.Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense announce that they have a downloadable spreadsheet with what looks to me to be the definitive list of links to earmark request disclosures from House members. The Hill gives some good examples of how hard it is to find the disclosures.
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Making sense of online earmark disclosures
By Bill Allison Apr 7, 2009 2:13 p.m.As noted immediately below, House members started disclosing, on their official Web sites, their requests for earmarks (which members use to allocate federal funds for specific projects and recipients) last Friday. Over the weekend, I started looking at the disclosures, more to see what format the disclosures were in rather than whether they were online by a certain time. Since Roll Call first reported the changes, this has been a concern of mine.
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Links to House earmark disclosures in one database
By Bill Allison Apr 6, 2009 6:19 p.m.House members had to post their earmark requests for fiscal year 2010 online this weekend; the original deadline was Friday, but that was extended to Saturday at 5 p.m., according to CNN.
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Former PMA Group Clients Get Defense Earmarks from Murtha for 2010
By Anupama Narayanswamy Apr 3, 2009 9:54 p.m.Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., has requested defense related funding for five companies that hired the PMA Group last year, according to a review of the earmark requests released on the Congressman's website. Murtha has requested a total of $23.8 million to be directed to these companies.
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Dicks requests earmark for Concurrent Technologies
By Bill Allison Apr 3, 2009 9:47 p.m.Rep. Norm Dicks requested one Defense earmark for one former client of PMA Group:
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Moran requests funds for Samueli Institute
By Bill Allison Apr 3, 2009 9:39 p.m.The press release is here. The Washington Post profiled the research facility a while back:
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Visclosky shuts out former PMA Group clients
By Bill Allison Apr 3, 2009 7:54 p.m.Rep. Pete Visclosky was one of the top recipients of contributions from PMA Group. He endorsed some form of investigation of the lobbying firm that was raided by the FBI -- "What form that action takes, who offers it, how it will turn out, I don't know," he said last month. In his fiscal year 2010 earmark requests, just posted online, he requested no earmarks for former clients of PMA Group.
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Moran requests nine defense earmarks for former PMA Group clients
By Bill Allison Apr 3, 2009 7:30 p.m.Rep. James Moran released his list of appropriations requests today. A quick review shows he's asking for nine earmarks for former clients of PMA Group, worth a total of $17.5 million.
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