When will the people of Pennsylvania say “enough is enough” and spare the rest of the nation’s tax payers from this guy?
In the massive 2008 military-spending bill now before Congress — which could go to a House-Senate conference as soon as Thursday — Mr. Murtha has steered more taxpayer funds to his congressional district than any other member. The Democratic lawmaker is chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which will oversee more than $459 billion in military spending this year.
Johnstown’s good fortune has come at the expense of taxpayers everywhere else. Defense contractors have found that if they open an office here and hire the right lobbyist, they can get lucrative, no-bid contracts. Over the past decade, Concurrent Technologies Corp., a defense-research firm that employs 800 here, got hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to Rep. Murtha despite poor reviews by Pentagon auditors. The National Drug Intelligence Center, with 300 workers, got $509 million, though the White House has tried for years to shut it down as wasteful and unnecessary. Another beneficiary: MTS Technologies, run by a man who got his start some 40 years ago shining shoes at Mr. Murtha’s Johnstown Minute Car Wash.
A review by The Wall Street Journal of dozens of such contracts funded by Mr. Murtha’s committee shows that many weren’t sought by the military or federal agencies they were intended to benefit. Some were inefficient or mismanaged, according to interviews, public records and previously unpublished Pentagon audits. One Murtha-backed firm, ProLogic Inc., is under federal investigation for allegedly diverting public funds to develop commercial software, people close to the case say. The company denies wrongdoing and is in line to get millions of dollars more in the pending defense bill.
Many of these earmarks that Mr. Murtha has put into the Defense Spending Bill? The Pentagon didn’t even ask for many of these contracts in its annual budget requests.
Murtha added them just because.
If Pelsoi was at all serious about “draining the swamp” of corruption (she wasn’t), she would have started with this Pork King (she didn’t).
________
Michelle Malkin reminds us that a serious Republican candidate has stepped up to challenge Murtha in 2008: William T. Russell, an Army vet, 9/11 survivor, and small business owner in Pennsylvania. I’m on my way to drop some cash in his contribution coffer. This might not be winnable race, but it’s one that needs to be fought:
A small-business owner, Russell said he wants a local economy dependent on the free market. But he acknowledges some jobs may be lost if government contracts disappear.
Amen to that. No all you have to do is convince the folks who have been suckling at Murtha’s teats since 1974 to wean themselves from it.
As New Jersey proves over and over every election, it not how scummy one’s elected leaders are but how much they do for their scummy constituency.
