WASHINGTON - Earmarks like the infamous $223 million “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska are getting lots of public attention these days but The Examiner recently found that uncovering simple facts about them can be nearly impossible. When we asked questions about three earmarks worth millions of dollars given to local recipients, nobody seemed to know how the earmarks started or which member of Congress was responsible for them. One thing we did find out — members of Congress aren’t the only beneficiaries because federal agencies also get a cut — 10 percent of the total — on many earmarks. Earmarks are spending measures inserted in legislation by congressmen acting behind closed congressional doors. Because they are anonymous, it is impossible to know whether earmarks benefit a particular congressman personally or members of his or her staff, campaign contributors, business partners or family members. The federal Congressional Research Service found that last year’s congressional appropriations bills contained $67 billion worth of earmarks. The Office of Management and Budget recently posted on the Internet a database the agency compiled of 13,496 earmarks approved by Congress in 2005 worth more than $19 billion. OMB had to go through a tedious process to identify these earmarks because an astonishing 95 percent were hidden in legislative bill reports or agency managers’ statements, making it virtually impossible for the public to figure out which lawmaker parked pork in which bill. Drilling deep into the OMB database, The Examiner randomly selected three earmarks that went to local firms, and then attempted to establish their paternity. We might as well have asked Coke for its formula. For example, Lason Services Inc.’s Beltsville office received a $5.4 million earmark to “make the historical climate record from the mid-1800s available online.” According to OMB Watch, a D.C.-based liberal nonprofit, Lason was awarded two more sole-source contracts totaling $4.7 million for the same purpose in 2006. When we asked who sponsored the Lason earmarks, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget and public affairs office couldn’t tell us. Same response from the legislative office of the U.S. Commerce Department, NOAA’s organizational parent. Ditto NOAA’s Climate Data Modernization Project in Asheville, N.C., which was to receive Lason’s work product, and the House Appropriations Committee staff. Nobody at Lason would talk, either, even though the firm could be considered by some an odd choice to get federal tax dollars. Lason filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and its CEO, COO and CFO were all either convicted or charged with fraudulently inflating company revenues two years later. Beltsville is in the congressional district of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s, D-Md., so we called his office, but his staff said he had nothing to do with the Lason earmark. Then we called Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who has previously backed NOAA earmarks, but an aide said she wasn’t the Lason sponsor. Finally, a spokesman for Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich., whose congressional district includes Lason’s headquarters in Troy, Mich., admitted the congressman had asked in 2003 that the financially troubled company be allowed to participate in NOAA’s climate history project. But Knollenberg didn’t sponsor the earmark in question, the spokesman claimed. This runaround is typical, according to groups that have been fighting earmarks for years. “If nobody takes credit for [an earmark],” Tom Finnegan of Citizens Against Government Waste told us, “there’s no way to attribute a specific sponsor.” Or hold specific members of Congress accountable. We tried to trace another $4.4 million earmark awarded to Raytheon Information Solutions in Upper Marlboro to “evaluate new computer hardware and software technologies, utilizing the existing test bed and prototype” for NASA. Raytheon is the fifth-largest defense contractor in the U.S. Its political action committee doled out $656,543 to congressional candidates of both parties during the last election cycle. Raytheon also employs dozens of former members of Congress and former administration officials, who successfully lobbied for $9.1 billion in defense contracts in 2005 — the same year Raytheon got the NASA earmark. But the company refused to comment when The Examiner asked about the sponsor of this particular earmark, or the millions of dollars’ worth of other earmarks it also received. We called NASA’s public affairs office three times seeking the identity of the congressional sponsor of the Raytheon earmark and asking why the expenditure wasn’t included in the agency’s regular budget. None of our calls were returned. The third earmark that caught our eye was for $16 million to Washington-based MZM Inc. for “Mission Response Group Support Services.” Mitchell Wade, the company’s CEO, pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe former U.S. Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham. Cunningham is now serving a 10-year federal prison sentence for taking more than $2.4 million in bribes in return for helping MZM and other firms secure government contracts largely funded by secretive earmarks. The $8,000 Wade gave Cunningham in upfront campaign contributions was a trifle compared with the hundreds of thousands of dollars he slipped him under the table, according to court documents. Company officials did not return The Examiner’s repeated telephone calls seeking comment on the $16 million MZM earmark. Most of the recent complaints about earmarks have come from the public, not the executive branch, which would be expected to resent congressional incursions into its contracting authority. But congressional sources tell The Examiner that federal agencies often go along with the earmark scam because they get a 10 percent cut for “oversight” of earmark projects in addition to their regular budgets. And because most earmarks are not legally binding, this extra money comes with few strings attached. It’s a perfect setup for the politicians, bureaucrats and companies involved; a win-win for everybody except the taxpayers.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Washington Examiner’s local opinion editor. She can be reached at bhollingsworth@dcexaminer.com. Examiner intern Stephanie Aulis contributed to this report.
