[CPEO-MEF] FUNDING: Earmarks questioned

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Earmarks of Committee Members Probing Defense Earmarks Questioned

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post
July 30, 2009

Members of the House ethics committee, who are investigating a pattern 
of lawmakers steering federal funds to generous defense contractors, are 
all set to have their pet military projects funded by the same committee 
whose activities they are probing.

The 10 committee members together would get 29 earmarks -- or $59 
million in federal funding for projects they requested in their 
districts or states -- under a proposed House military spending bill up 
for a vote today or tomorrow. The details were approved last week by the 
House defense appropriations subcommittee, whose practice of steering 
earmarks to a well-connected lobby firm close to the chairman, Rep. John 
P. Murtha (D-Pa.), is the subject of the ethics committee's investigation.

Ethics committee chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) would receive $9.5 
million in three earmarks under Murtha's bill. That includes $4 million 
to clean up contamination at the former Almaden (Calif.) Air Force 
Station, $2 million for "printed and conformal electronics" research, 
and $3.5 million to help Stanford University aeronautical research into 
the use of parafin-based rocket fuel.


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/30/AR2009073001431.html

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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