Click here for the transcript of "Gaza Meltdown; U.S. Peacekeepers; Katrina Tragedy; Pet Projects; Pensions for Criminals; Unsafe Imports; Unguarded Border; Hospital Calls 91," aired June 15, 2007 - 23:00 ET
COOPER (on camera): Welcome back to this 360 "Keeping them Honest" special. We're coming to you from New Orleans, from the pump station at the 17th Street Canal.
Before the break we showed you how people in power right here need to be held accountable for promises they made and continue to make about rebuilding New Orleans.
Of course, the demand for answers goes far beyond this city. There are lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have no problem spending billions on pet projects that often make no sense at all. And we're all we're paying for them.
CNN's Drew Griffin tonight, "Keeping them Honest."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We're on a treasure hunt, looking for your money.
Let's start with $2 million, your tax dollars right here. Listen...
(on camera): I think I hear a plane.
(voice-over): This is the tiny airport in tiny and remote Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Pull up a chair, grab a magazine, a newspaper, because it's going to take a while to show you how your federal tax dollars were spent here.
JERRY STITES, AIRPORT MANAGER: It's a pretty slow day. So if we had known you were coming, I'm sure we would have been busier.
GRIFFIN: We'll get back to how Congress spent your money in Rice Lake in a moment.
Meantime, here are more ways Congress has secretly spent your money.
Chances you are weren't a guest at the historic Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida, last summer. But taxpayers spent $96,000 to help renovate it.
Skiing more your style?
You paid $250,000 last year to renovate a ski lift. In our treasure hunt, it was tricky to find that one. The money came out of last year's massive transportation bill. No mention of skiing.
Instead...
TIM PHILLIPS, AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY: For the construction of the Alyeska Roundhouse in Girdwood, Alaska, $250,000.
GRIFFIN: In Congress, such treasure is called an earmark.
ANNIE PATNAUDE, AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY: Again, no -- no name. And oftentimes these earmarks are certainly a bit vague.
GRIFFIN: Annie Patnaude watches Congress for a conservative economic watchdog group. She found two earmarks for the Alyeska Roundhouse -- a total of $500,000 for the top of a ski lift.
Tim Phillips is president of the watchdog group.
PHILLIPS: I mean, imagine this. You've got a blank credit card that's the people's money. And you have the ability to spend that money in complete secrecy, without ever having to be accountable for that. No wonder we're having abuses and waste and fraud and mismanagement. It's a recipe for it. GRIFFIN: That recipe for pork was supposed to change this year. The new open, Democratic Party controlled Congress promised the earmark process would no longer be secret. All earmark requests would made public with plenty of time for debate.
(on camera): But Dave Obey, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and one of those Democrats bragging about the changes, has decided that earmarks -- those generous gifts of your money -- will be inserted into bills only after the bill has cleared the House floor. In other words, earmarks will still be done in secret -- no public debate.
There was supposed to be a change.
SEN. TOM COBURN (R), OKLAHOMA: Well, they lied to the American public. It was a game.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): Senator Coburn says it's the same over on the Senate side.
CNN obtained this e-mail written in February from the Senate Appropriations Committee, asking Senators to submit all requests for earmarks by April 13. So the earmark requests for this year -- and there have been thousands in the past -- have already been filed. But not even other members of Congress can find out who asked for how much and for what.
COBURN: No, they aren't published. And they're not out there. I couldn't find them if I wanted to.
PHILLIPS: If you're a member of Congress and you're asking for tax dollars for a project, the least can you do is have the, you know, let's say the political courage to put it up on your Web site in advance and to disclose it well before any vote takes place.
GRIFFIN: Sounds reasonable. But not to the Senator who gets final say on spending -- Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd.
In an e-mail to CNN, the Senator's staff told us, allowing the public to actually see earmark requests in advance isn't a good idea.
Apparently the public can't be trusted with that information.
"If all earmark requests are made public," the e-mail says, "this would almost certainly lead to an increase in requests, as members are pressured from home to compete for more projects."
PATNAUDE: This is an omnibus appropriations bill.
GRIFFIN: This behemoth of a bill is chock full of one-line requests for your tax dollars. We followed the clues back to where we started this treasure hunt.
(on camera): So this is the Rice Lake Airport I asked you about?
PATNAUDE: Sure. Look for it on there. GRIFFIN: And this is on page 1,384.
And it's somewhere in this fine print, I'm taking it.
PATNAUDE: Look for it.
GRIFFIN: Right down here.
PATNAUDE: Right.
GRIFFIN: So Rice Lake Regional Airport, Carl's Field, Wisconsin, various improvements, $2 million.
(voice-over): $2 million in federal funds without debate.
Back at Rice Lake, Wisconsin, we sat at the end of the runway and waited four hours. In all that time, we counted one corporate jet, one twin engine plane and five single engine planes -- a total of seven aircraft in four hours.
On a good day, we're told, 34 planes in an hour. But no commercial flights.
(on camera): But this airport is vital for corporate executives. They like to visit Rice Lake's manufacturing plants, but apparently don't like to stay the night.
STITES: Before we did the expansion on the runway, they couldn't land here. They had to drive an hour-and-a-half to get to their plant because our airport wasn't large enough for that.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): And which U.S. Congressman decided extending the runway for a few corporate jets was worth your money?
Wisconsin Democrat David Obey -- the very same person now in charge of appropriations and earmarks.
He said in a statement, Wisconsin doesn't get its fair share. "My only apology," he wrote, "is that I can't do more for Wisconsin."
In the next few months, in what Congressman Obey says is the most open earmark process ever, the bills will be drafted, the earmarks added. But only then, just before those bills are passed, will the public learn where the treasure is buried.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
COOPER: Drew, the Democrats promised this was going to be the most open earmark process in history. Is it?
GRIFFIN (on camera): They made that promise before they got in power; then once in power, it all kind of clammed up, Anderson, and they kind of changed the definition of what "open" was going to mean.
Now we're told "open" is going to be, well, we'll tell you what we spent the money on after we've approved it in conference committee. Now, this week they've been fighting over whether or not they're actually going to tell us a couple of days or even a week before they vote on it. So we might actually see what they're going to spend our money on before they actually spend it.
It's been a very confusing process.
COOPER: Wow. Imagine that.
Drew, thanks.
From the shameful but legal practices of earmarks to criminal allegations. We're keeping everyone in Congress honest.
See this guy? It is Democratic Congressman William Jefferson. He was indicted on 16 federal corruption charges when his home was searched. You may remember authorities found $90,000 cooling off in his freezer.
Jefferson's future may include prison time and to help pay for his defense team, maybe he can use some of the money he'll collect from his pension if he retires.
Like we said before, it is your money.
Once again, here's Drew Griffin.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GRIFFIN (voice-over): Former Congressman Randall Duke Cunningham pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2 million in bribes, but he still gets his Congressional pension of an estimated $64,000 a year.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What are you going to tell the judge today?
GRIFFIN: Convicted Congressman James Trafficant gets an estimated $40,000 a year. Both of them are still in prison.
Why hasn't anyone stopped it?
Senate Bill 2268 was introduced last year to do just that. The bill would have banned the pensions of lawmakers convicted of what its co-sponsor called the really bad crimes: stealing, bribery, public corruption.
SEN. KEN SALAZAR (D), COLORADO: It's really that white-collar crime where people, instead of representing the public interest and the people of the country, instead of representing their own personal interests. And so that's why we went after the white collar crime.
GRIFFIN: But even as good as it sounds, the bill never even got a vote. It got to this Senate subcommittee and died.
The chairman of last session's committee was Republican George Voinovich of Ohio. His staff told us he was just too busy. The ranking Democrat was Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii. He emerged from a vote in the Senate says he doesn't know where there was no vote last year.
(on camera): You support it and you will support it?
SEN. DANIEL AKAKA (D), HAWAII: I will. Yes.
GRIFFIN: I -- but I'm still -- I spent two days trying to figure out why nobody supported it last year.
AKAKA: Yes, that's right. I didn't, but this year is different.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): Two more Senators on the subcommittee, one Democrat and one Republican, also had no explanation for last year's failure. In fact, they couldn't remember what happened.
SEN. TOM COBURN (R), OKLAHOMA: The question is, is what happened to it last year? I don't know the answer to that question.
SEN. MARK PRYOR (D), ARKANSAS: I can't remember all the specifics. We had a lot of amendments last year.
GRIFFIN: If their memories are a little weak on the subject of getting crooks a pension, it's because they say last year ethics weren't a big issue. Now they are.
PRYOR: This year we're going to try to do our dead level best to pass the amendment to take pensions away from Senators and Congressmen who have been convicted of public corruption while they're in office.
GRIFFIN: But critics are telling us nothing will change, and if we want to find out why, just go into the House Ways and Means Committee hearing room and see how Congress has treated one of its own who was caught and convicted, but certainly not forgotten.
(on camera): That is convicted Congressman Dan Rostenkowski's picture up there. The former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee went to prison for stealing public money. He got a pardon from Bill Clinton. He got a spot on the wall. And he gets from you and me, the federal taxpayers, an estimated $126,000 a year pension.
MELANIE SLOAN, GOVERNMENT WATCHDOG: This is money they don't want to take away from their colleagues and their colleagues' families. These are their friends we're talking about.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Drew, since you first reported on this, Jefferson's been indicted. If he was convicted and went to prison, would he lose his pension?
GRIFFIN: No. Anderson, that bill that they promised would pass hasn't even been voted on. It hasn't passed. So the Congressman is going to get his pension no matter what -- no matter what he's convicted of, no matter if they kick him out of Congress. He's going to get that pension because of the fact that Congress has, again, not done anything to move this bill along. His pension will go through.
The only exception is if somehow buried in all these charges is the charge of treason, and I haven't seen that. He's just charged with padding his own pockets.
