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Congressional pet projects boom -- in secret
Lobbyists with Hill ties key to record funding
By Susan Milligan
Globe Staf
01/29/06 "Boston
Globe" -- -- WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress
inserted a record number of pet projects in last year's budget,
feeding the burgeoning Washington lobbying industry that
lawmakers in both parties insist they want to reform.
The local projects, which range from bike trails to specialized
museums and educational activities by wild-turkey enthusiasts,
are inserted in the budget in secrecy, during committee
negotiations, and have no recorded sponsors -- a system geared
toward allowing members to avoid accountability.
Congress, which spent $10 billion on 1,439 such projects in
1995, ran up $27.3 billion for a record 13,997 such projects --
known as earmarks -- last year, according to the nonpartisan
Citizens Against Government Waste.
A Globe review of Senate records shows that the secretive
earmark process has also become a boon for lobbyists, who sell
clients on their ability to persuade members to insert pet
projects into the budget.
The number of firms that registered for the first time to lobby
on budget and appropriations issues grew from 388 in 1998 to
1,263 last year, according to Senate documents.
Further, the number of reports by lobbying shops pressuring
Congress on those issues swelled from 1,447 in 1998 to 4,013
last year, according to the midyear Senate filings, suggesting
that lobbyists see a growth industry in securing local projects
for municipalities or interest groups.
The Globe review found that lobbyists arguing for the projects
often have close connections to the members of Congress they are
pressuring for cash. Many have worked on Capitol Hill --
including directly for the lawmakers they are lobbying -- and
others contribute to the members' campaigns.
''It's become a pay-to-play system," said Keith Ashdown, vice
president for policy at the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common
Sense. ''If you don't have the money to hire a lobbyist,
especially a former appropriations staffer, your chances of
getting federal dollars are thrown through the window."
Though earmarks are, under congressional rules, impossible to
trace, some members crow about their ability to deliver pet
projects.
For example, Students in Free Enterprise, a group headquartered
in the southwest Missouri district of Roy Blunt, the acting
House majority leader, paid $80,000 last year to the lobbying
form of Cassidy and Associates to win federal support. One of
the lobbyists listed on the case is Gregg L. Hartley, Blunt's
former chief of staff.
Last year, the group was rewarded with a total of $1 million in
grants in two separate spending bills. Blunt, a leading
candidate to be the permanent House majority leader, heralded
one of the grants, and his staff said he supported the grant
along with the state's senior senator, Republican Christopher S.
Bond.
The close connections between Blunt and Hartley are not illegal,
and a Cassidy and Associates spokeswoman said ''it's not
inappropriate either." Spokeswoman Aimee Steel, speaking on
behalf of Hartley, said it was natural that lobbyists with
connections to a particular member of Congress would be hired by
a client whose interests are in that district.
''Most lobbyists represent clients with ties to the members'
offices where they once worked," Steel said.
Blunt himself has called for a more open earmarking process,
saying the budget items -- which are now slipped into bills
after nonpublic requests by individual members to Appropriations
Committee leaders -- should be identified by the lawmakers
asking for the money, the name and address of the intended
recipient, and a justification for the spending.
But like many other lawmakers in both parties, Blunt believes
the earmarks themselves are not inherently wrong and should not
be banned.
''Congressman Blunt believes that while more accountability and
transparency are needed in the system, elected officials are
better able to make decisions regarding funding of local needs
than Washington bureaucrats," said Blunt spokeswoman Jessica
Boulanger.
But like Blunt, many other elected officials choose to reward
projects associated with their former staff members. Senator
Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, put out a news
release last month pointing out several items he was able to
secure in the defense appropriations bill, including $5 million
for a company called Night Vision Devices, based in Lehigh
County, Pa., to produce miniature hand-held thermal imagers for
the military.
To press its case in Washington, Night Vision retained IKON
Public Affairs, and two of the lobbyists on the Night Vision
account previously held senior posts on Specter's staff. IKON
has also donated to Specter's campaign.
Craig Snyder, one of the lobbyists and a former Specter staff
member, said the project was inserted as an earmark because the
Defense Department's procurement system is done with a long lead
time and doesn't accommodate immediate needs, such as the
night-vision equipment required for war. Specter's support for
the project was natural, from both a policy and a constituent
perspective, Snyder said.
But Congress-watchers say the relationships, while entirely
legal, have gotten too cozy, allowing an elite group of
well-connected lobbyists to collect big fees from clients, draw
on access to their former bosses to promote special-interest
projects, and then reward the lawmakers who fund the projects --
often in secret -- with campaign contributions.
''You have sort of a perpetual motion system that kind of feeds
on itself and is closely linked. One could almost view the
lobbying community as an informal subsidiary of Congress," said
Ronald Utt, a budget analyst with The Heritage Foundation, which
advocates trimmed-down federal spending. ''This is going to be
really difficult to break without some really dramatic
exercise," he said.
Utt said the system encourages lobby shops to target small
organizations or municipalities, promising to win federal grants
worth several times the price of the lobbying fees. The
competitive nature of the earmarks makes even small
organizations spend big money on lobbyists, he said.
Even the National Wild Turkey Federation has a lobbyist. The
group spent $100,000 last year to lobby on appropriations,
winning at least $242,000 for a project slipped into the
agriculture spending bill. Donna Leggett, the group's director
of development, said the turkey enthusiasts need Washington
representation to help secure funding for educational programs
the organization holds. ''There's no shakedown here," she said.
Lawmakers in both parties say that while they see the flaws in
the system, they would be depriving their own constituents if
they didn't play along.
''I think Congress ought to decide not to do them [earmarks],
except in extraordinary cases," said Representative John F.
Tierney, Democrat of Salem, who on his own website takes credit
for bringing several federal grants to his district. But in the
meantime, ''when that's the way the money is being distributed,
you do feel as though you ought to try to get [local
Massachusetts] projects the attention they need."
Lawmakers get pressure from both sides, he said, with
constituent groups clamoring for federal cash and appropriations
chairmen dangling local projects in front of lawmakers in
exchange for a vote on the spending bills.
''They don't say it to you explicitly, but the word gets around
that people who don't vote for a particular bill will get cut
out," Tierney said.
Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican trying to make
it harder to slip in earmarked projects, said it is not true
that constituents will punish representatives who don't bring
back cash for the district. Flake noted that he had a primary
opponent who accused him of not ''bringing home the bacon,"
winning the endorsements of several mayors with the allegation.
But Flake was reelected anyway.
Flake is sponsor of a bill that would require that such items be
specified in a bill, with the names of their sponsors
identified, and be subject to congressional debate. Flake said
it would not be enough simply to make public which members have
requested which earmarks, if there were no way to challenge
them.
''If we had any shame, there wouldn't be a problem," said Flake,
who said he does not request earmarks for his district.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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