Dimocrat Murtha's PORK>Murtha nabs $150M pork
By ROSANA DIXON
August 03, 2007
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations defense panel, has secured the most earmarked dollars in the 2008 military spending bill.
Murtha’s 48 earmarks amount to a total of $150.5 million, according to a database compiled by the watchdog organization Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS).
The House is expected to take up the $459.6 billion defense appropriations bill Friday. It contains 1,337 earmarks, costing $3.07 billion.
Keith Ashdown of TCS said, however, that the sum is derived from only the earmarks that the panel disclosed at the back of the bill’s report. He expects to find undisclosed projects as well.
The 2008 bill for “the first time gives us a snapshot [of] how the committee allocates taxpayers’ resources,” Ashdown added.
Even though the panel disclosed the project name, the requesting member, and the budget line in which the project was requested, the bill and its earmarks are not a model of transparency. The panel did not disclose either the amount requested or the companies that would benefit. TCS paired the disclosed requests in the committee report with the dollar amounts for the projects published in the bill.
Murtha, the defense industry’s darling, has been known throughout his tenure on the defense panel to shell out a large number of earmarks. His biggest earmark in the bill is $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), a move that sparked a fierce fight with Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), who earlier this year voted in a private meeting to strip Murtha’s earmark.
The Bush administration requested $16 million to shut down the center, which is in Murtha’s district, because it replicated the work of a similar center.
Murtha’s second highest earmark is for $15 million for a military molecular medicine initiative.
Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), one of the most senior defense appropriators, was able to secure $44 million in earmarks, including $1 million for medical technology to look into rare blood diseases. He made that request with Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). The two also requested $5 million for a littoral sensor grid.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) got her share of pork projects — 11 projects valued at $37.3 million.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) haul is $26 million.<
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