Obama plan would not block Bridge to Nowhere

President Obama’s proposal to curb earmarks would not have prevented the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, the current scrutiny surrounding federal money awarded to a firm raided by the FBI, or other prominent earmark scandals.

The administration’s new requirements — including calls for competitive bidding, public hearings and disclosure on websites — would do little to stop troubled earmarks that are vaguely worded, directed at top-secret projects, drafted with only one contractor in mind or aimed at seemingly legitimate organizations fronting for other means, according to experts who follow the controversial practice closely.

{mosads}“The president’s proposal runs the risk of being like just squeezing a balloon and the nefarious activity just shifts to other areas,” said Steve Ellis, a spokesman for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government spending watchdog group.

A spokesperson at the Office of Management and Budget could not be reached for comment at press time.

 The main tenet of Obama’s recently announced reform plan would bar lawmakers from directing earmarks to for-profit companies without competitive bidding. In comments outlining his plan last week, Obama called the awarding of earmarks to private companies “the single most corrupting element of this practice, as witnessed by some of the indictments and convictions that we’ve already seen.”

“Private companies differ from the public entities that Americans rely on every day — schools and police stations and fire departments,” he said.

That sweeping statement, however, fails to address some of the most recent and egregious abuses of the earmarking system.

The most striking example is the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, the overpass connecting Ketchikan, Alaska, to Gravina Island’s 50 residents and the Ketchikan airport. Former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) championed the $233 million earmark, which was cited as a symbol of pork-barrel spending during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Another example of controversial earmarks the new reform would not touch came Monday when The Washington Post reported on a nonprofit defense research center at Pennsylvania State University that collected nearly $250 million in earmarks through Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), then channeled a significant portion of the funds to companies that were among Murtha’s campaign supporters.

According to the report, officials at the center regularly consulted with two “handlers” close to Murtha, one of whom was a lobbyist for the PMA Group, a firm that recently disbanded in the wake of an FBI raid on its offices.

Obama’s pledge to prevent earmarks from flowing unchecked to for-profit companies also would not have addressed several other high-profile earmark scandals.

For instance, earmarks won by imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff benefited the gambling interests of Native American tribes, not companies.

Obama’s plan calls for lawmakers to place earmark requests on their websites “in advance,” so the public and the press can examine them and judge their merits. He also said earmarks must be open to scrutiny at public hearings, where members will have to justify their expense to taxpayers. Obama, however, did not address how Congress should provide more scrutiny for earmarks to companies providing goods and services for secret intelligence programs, where the abuses occurred in the case involving former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.).

Cunningham, now in prison for bribery, directed millions of dollars in earmarks to for-profit defense contractors. Many of those earmarks went to black military and intelligence programs, which would continue to remain secret and immune to Obama’s requirements for more public scrutiny and transparency.

The Coconut Road earmark is another controversy that would fall through the cracks of Obama’s plan. The scandal involved a $10 million earmark for a highway exchange that would have benefited a Florida land developer whose firm and employees directed tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to Young, who obtained the funds for the pet project. When the earmark language was not specific enough for a lobbyist representing the land developer, a staffer broke congressional rules and made a change to the language after the bill had passed the House and Senate.

The Senate ultimately voted to have the Justice Department investigate the matter, but not until after years had passed and local Florida groups publicly rejected the money.

Ellis cited several areas of abuse that operate under the auspices of nonprofits. There are numerous nonprofit technology research centers set up in districts throughout the country that take earmark money and pass it along to for-profit corporations. Supporters argue that the research centers create jobs and spur local economies, but critics, such as Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), deride these nonprofits as “earmark incubators.”

Obama’s call for competitive bidding for all earmarks to for-profit companies also would be difficult to enforce, Ellis said.

“A lot of lawmakers say that there’s already competitive bidding when it comes to defense earmarks,” Ellis said. “You can have all the competition you want, but if there’s only one provider of the project specified, you’re out of luck.”

Other watchdogs argue that Obama should have done more to address the crux of the matter: the link between earmarks and campaign contributions to lawmakers requesting them.

In his remarks, Obama said only: “It should go without saying that an earmark must never be traded for political favors.”

Therein lies the rub, argues Meredith McGehee, the policy director of the Campaign Legal Center.

Drawing the line at earmarks for nonprofit and government projects is “too dull of an instrument,” considering the well-documented uses of nonprofits as conduits for Abramoff and others, McGehee argues.

“There’s a lot to be reformed in the process when it comes to the links between earmarks and campaign contributions,” she said. “That’s where this whole conversation should start.”

Fred Wertheimer, who heads the watchdog group Democracy 21, agrees. Although he sees the president’s reforms as a step in the right direction, he has repeatedly called for an overhaul of the nation’s entire campaign finance system as the only real way to address the inherent corrosive link between earmarks and donations.

Wertheimer wants a public financing system for congressional races, involving small, limited contributions from individuals combined with public funds.

“We need to get away from a system that almost invites lobbyists and interest groups to use campaign money to get taxpayer dollars in the form of earmarks,” he said.