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Senate quashes $1M grant for museum at Woodstock site
Clinton and Schumer had sought funds for contributor's project
By Ken Dilanian
USA Today
October 19, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted Thursday to kill a $1 million grant for a museum on the site of the 1969 Woodstock concert, a rare rebuke of a legislative pet project and a blow to the presidential candidate who backed it, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Clinton and her New York colleague, Sen. Charles Schumer, had the funding inserted into the $604 billion education and health spending bill. The Woodstock project's main backer, Alan Gerry, is a registered Republican who recently became a major contributor to the Schumer-led Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Nine days after the "earmark" was placed in the bill in June, Gerry and his wife contributed the maximum of $9,200 total to Clinton's primary and general election campaign funds. The Gerry family contributed an additional $20,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, USA TODAY reported Wednesday.
Two Republican senators, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn and Arizona's Jon Kyl, offered an amendment Thursday seeking to redirect the money to a maternal health care program. In a time of mounting deficits, they argued, senators shouldn't be steering money to a museum that has wealthy private supporters.
"How can we, with a straight face, argue to (the public) that we're not wasting their hard-earned money," Kyl said.
Republicans didn't expect to win the vote, Coburn spokesman John Hart said, but when Schumer tried to table the amendment, five Democrats joined every Republican present in voting against him. The motion lost, 52-42, and Democrats agreed to nix the Woodstock museum funding under a rule that required no further votes.
"The ridiculousness of this earmark was such that you even had Democrats who ... had to vote with Republicans," Senate Republican spokesman Ryan Loskarn said.
It was only the third time in dozens of attempts since 2005 that Coburn has persuaded the Senate to kill an earmark, his spokesman said.
Among the Democrats voting against the earmark was Jim Webb of Virginia, who was recovering from shrapnel wounds he incurred in Vietnam while the Woodstock concert was held in August 1969. He declined to comment.
Clinton was at a campaign event while Schumer defended the spending. He said it would help create jobs in upstate New York's Sullivan County, which he portrayed as economically depressed. "I am proud of the earmarks I've put in this bill," he said.
Coburn and Kyl said that the county's 4.1% unemployment rate is lower than the 4.7% national average. After the vote, Schumer's office did not respond to a request for comment. Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines said the senator will continue "to promote economic development and tourism in New York state."
Gerry, who according to Forbes magazine is worth $1.3 billion, bought the Woodstock concert site a decade ago with plans to turn it into a tourist center. He said he contributed $85 million to the project through a family foundation that owns the land and facilities. A performing arts center opened last year, and the two-story museum is under construction.
Gerry contributed more than $200,000 to politicians in New York state since 1999, mostly Republicans. The state contributed $15 million to the concert hall, known as the Bethel Center for the Performing Arts.
The health spending bill passed the appropriations committee June 21 with the Woodstock earmark. Five days later, Gerry, his wife and two of their children made a $20,000 contribution to the Democrats' Senate campaign committee. Four days after that, they made the contributions to Clinton. The Gerrys have given $150,000 to the Schumer-led committee since 2005.
Coburn argues there is an unseemly correlation between campaign contributions and earmarks, but he did not raise the issue on the Senate floor. Spokesmen for Schumer and Clinton said the donations were unrelated to the earmark.
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