Category: Renee Dudley
Hodes on List of Vulnerable House Members to Receive Aid
FRONTLINE
New Hampshire Union Leader
Alyssa Marcus and Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
15 February 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15– Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) is on a list of Democratic House members who are already considered vulnerable in 2008 and are being tapped to receive extra fund raising and organizational help by a Democratic campaign organization trying to insure their re-election.
“Frontline” is a program devised by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) which aims to keep incumbent Democrats in their House seats. The committee has selected Hodes as well as nearly 30 other members of Congress, mostly freshmen, to participate in the program.
A spokesman from the DCCC, said the members were chosen for the program because they ran successful campaigns in 2006 despite coming from competitive districts and are likely to have competitive races again in 2008.
“Frontline’s success in the last cycle speaks for itself,” said a party spokesman. “By the fall of 2005, half the seats on the [2006 election] Frontline program were considered safe.”
The spokesman said that the program has been running since 2002. “All the candidates on the list know this is a competitive program,” he said.
The spokesman explained that the candidates are selected and interviewed by the campaign committee, but once they agree to be on the Frontline list, they are required to meet demanding fundraising goals.
“The candidates are chosen based on how competitive their races were, but they enter into this exclusive program of their own accord,” he said. In exchange, the DCCC provides them with fundraising and organizational support.
Another spokesman from the DCCC said that the organization has a significantly larger Frontline list this year than in previous election cycles because the Democrats won more seats in the last election, and therefore have more incumbents to support.
When asked if any of the members are offended at being tagged as vulnerable, the spokesman said: “Absolutely not, it’s just to show that there is strong support for them and that the party is backing these individuals.”
“The whole point is that the candidates know they’re in a vulnerable situation, we at the DCCC know, and the Republicans know,” he said, adding that members agree to be part of the Frontline program before the list is publicly released. “The point is to make sure they know they’re not alone.”
He added: “We’re preparing to back them up, but we don’t want the efforts to be one-sided. It gives us that warm feeling that both sides are working together for the same purpose to accomplish the same goal.”
Jennifer Crider, the committee’s communications director, said that the members are expected to raise between $600,000 and $1 million in campaign funds by the end of June.
Bergen Kenny, Hodes’ press secretary, said the freshman congressman is pleased to be on the list. “We think it’s a sign that Paul’s a serious candidate,” she said. “We’re thrilled to have help and support.” Hodes says that it’s an honor to be included on the list. But he also says that he’s not focusing on campaigning right now. “I’m focused on representing New Hampshire and making sure my constituents’ voices are heard in Washington,” he said. Kenny also said the members on the list had tough races last year and all did good jobs and earned the support of the party.
Other House members from New England on the Frontline list include Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.). More than 80 percent of the members on the list are freshmen.
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National Housing Trends Echoed in Connecticut
FED RESERVE
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
14 February 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 —Local housing officials say Connecticut is on pace with what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called a “substantial cooling” of the nationwide housing market.
Bernanke, addressing the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Wednesday, said the housing market is a mixed bag: on one hand showing signs of “stabilization,” including a steadying of new and existing home sales and an increase in mortgage applications, and on the other hand showing a decline in construction as developers try to unload property already on the market.
Bernanke also said delinquency rates for subprime mortgages, high-interest loans given
to buyers with poor or no credit histories, have “increased appreciably.” Committee
chairman Thomas Dodd (D-Conn.), who held a committee hearing last week on
predatory lending, said during Wednesday’s hearing that he intends to follow-up
with Bernanke on this issue.
Terry Egan, editor-in-chief of Commercial Record, a magazine that tracks real estate, said the housing slowdown could actually benefit consumers.
“One way to look at this is as a necessary correction,” Egan said in a telephone interview. “Prices will pick up once the level is in reach of homebuyers. It’s an overdue cyclical adjustment of the housing market.”
One reason that market has been slumping, he said, is because over the past several years home prices throughout New England have risen faster than incomes, and buyers are being “priced out” of the housing market.
“A lot of buyers are waiting for the market to adjust and to allow home buying to come back in reach,” he said.
Egan said the slowdown in New England home sales has been more dramatic than the national trend because home prices in New England are higher.
“The higher the prices go, the further they have to drop,” he said, adding that the number of home sales in Connecticut has slowed dramatically over the past year and that average prices throughout the state have been flat.
The National Association of Realtors reported that nationwide sales of existing homes dropped 8.4 percent over the past year while the median house price rose by 1.1 percent, which is roughly on pace with the trend in Connecticut.
Jim Cronin, president of Dime Bank in Norwich, said he first noticed the housing slowdown over this past summer. “It’s a matter of supply and demand…. The supply is now growing,” he said in a telephone interview.
But Cronin also noted that an “affordable housing crisis” has resulted in a decrease in the purchasing power of the traditional middle class.
“People can’t afford homes because they are not at a middle-class level,” he said. “It’s a national phenomenon that we in Connecticut are not excluded from.”
Job opportunities at Pfizer and the casinos have over the years contributed to an influx of people to the area as well as an increase in the demand and cost of housing, Cronin said.
“Two years ago, people were giving more than the asking price,” he said, estimating that the average price for a home in Southeastern Connecticut is now about $235,000.
Peter Levine, a New York-based developer,- said the recent slump in the housing market has not discouraged him from investing in New London. “Southeastern Connecticut has the jobs, and they need the housing,” he said in a telephone interview.
The current speculation, Levine noted, is that homeownership became prohibitively expensive, driving people to rent. “Most of the talk about housing has to do with the single family housing market,” he said. “The market for multi-family apartments has not been affected and the rental market has not suffered.”
Egan said that condominiums follow the same trends as single-family homes, with a slight lag.
“After a run-up in home prices, people turn to condos,” he explained. “Then that market heats up and the single-family market cools off and the condo market follows.”
Bernanke said that the “reduced affordability” of owner-occupied housing over the past year led to greater demand for rental housing and therefore a faster pace of rent increases. He said rents should rise less quickly over the next two years, reflecting increased homeownership and an increased supply of rental units.
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Allen Makes State of the Coast Guard Address
CG ADDRESS
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
13 February 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13–Adm. Thad Allen, the Coast Guard Commandant, stressed the need Tuesday for overhauling the bureaucratic structure of the Coast Guard, but he did not offer a timeline for implementing the changes.
Giving his annual State of the Coast Guard address, Allen said that the Coast Guard has never been more “relevant and visible to the nation” but that the service as a whole faces its most daunting trials since World War II.
“We face significant challenges that are going to require us to think and act differently,” Allen said, noting the increased inter-agency cooperation in the post 9/11 world. “The world is changing and America’s Coast Guard is changing.”
He added: “This is a radically changed mission environment. The Coast Guard needs to evolve to keep pace.”
He said the Coast Guard needs to adapt its forces, command and control structure and mission support organization.
“We need a clear and coherent way to employ our forces to create a layered defense for the nation,” Allen said, proposing a blending of the current Atlantic and Pacific area commands into a single Coast Guard operations command. “It’s time to have one leader for mission support.”
“It’s time we have one commander in the field responsible for mission execution,” which, he explained, could improve global resource allocation.
In response to complaints of overwhelming bureaucracy that Allen said he heard during visits to Coast Guard stations throughout the country, the commandant proposed a more streamlined accounting system.
“We’ve been running some parts of the Coast Guard like a small business when we are a Fortune 500 company,” Allen said, adding that a single financial accounting system would help to better allocate resources and increase transparency. “It’s time to have one checkbook for the service.”
In response to recent criticism of lack of oversight in the design and construction of new ships under the Deepwater program, which is intended to replace the current Coast Guard fleet, Allen pledged increased cooperation and communication among the people responsible for overseeing the program..
“As the commandant, I am responsible for Deepwater, and we will get it right,” Allen said. In a press conference after the address, Allen said the Coast Guard was working to eliminate gaps in communication that have plagued Deepwater.
The Coast Guard will be able to award a new 43-month contract in June, Allen said, adding that the “general presumption” is that it will be re-awarded to Integrated Coast Guard Systems, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
In the press conference, Allen said the Coast Guard Academy task force and review board is still under federal and external peer review. He said the results will be provided to the chiefs of staff in a couple of weeks.
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Predatory Mortgage Lending Creating Crisis, Dodd Warns
HOMEOWNERSHIP
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
7 February 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 – Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., accused the mortgage broker industry Wednesday of predatory and irresponsible lending that, he warned, was creating a crisis for American homeowners.
Martin Eakes, CEO of the Center for Responsible Lending, told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee that more than a third of homebuyers who have subprime loans—high-interest loans given to buyers with poor or no credit histories—are likely victims of foreclosure.
Dodd, who chairs the committee, said that while the subprime loan market has helped borrowers acquire credit to buy homes, predatory practices have put other borrowers at high risk for failure.
He said more than half of subprime mortgages are “liars’ loans,” in which brokers sometimes make loan candidates appear more financially qualified than they actually are because the brokers are paid to get more people approved.
Dodd added that minorities are being particularly targeted for higher-cost subprime mortgages, regardless of their financial qualifications. Citing the 2005 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, he said: “Over half of African-American borrowers and 46 percent of Hispanic borrowers were given high-cost subprime loans. By comparison, only 17 percent of whites took out such loans.”
But despite national trends, local housing and mortgage officials say they do not believe Connecticut is headed toward the crisis Dodd described at the national level.
“In Eastern Connecticut, my sense is that predatory lending, while it exists, is not a major problem,” said John Bolduc, executive vice president of the Eastern Connecticut Association of Realtors in Norwich.
Fritz Conway, lobbyist for the Connecticut Mortgage Bankers Association, said, “On the one hand you want to come up with creative products, but on the other hand you want sufficient protective measures.”
Mortgage broker John Read, president of Atlantic Financial Services in Groton, said the 2001 Connecticut Abusive Home Loan Lending Practices Act had a dramatic impact on the most egregious abuses by imposing a maximum interest rate but still allowing credit to be readily available to those who need it.
Dodd has not proposed any legislation to curb predatory lending practices, but Read said all that is needed is better enforcement of laws already in place.
“You can’t legislate morality or intelligence,” he said. “You can’t make a lender act in a moral manner or make the borrower act more intelligently.”
“My hope is that we don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, and [that] any efforts to define and control predatory lending will be such that it won’t inhibit the availability of credit to the consumer,” Read said.
He added that a good loan process begins with the borrower. “The reason that loans are predatory is because buyers don’t take the time to educate themselves by reading what they are agreeing to,” he said. “Unfortunately, there will always be those who try to take advantage of others. There are people in the loan industry who care more about commission than about the parties involved.
“When you take an unscrupulous lender and a borrower who is unwilling to do the work they should do, it is a recipe for fraudulent lending. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Read added that predatory lending usually arises when loan candidates pursue out-of-state lenders.
Two witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing said they were victims of predatory lending offered through pop-up Internet loan ads and calls from telemarketers.
Jean Constantine-Davis, senior attorney at AARP, the lobbying group for seniors, urged more accountability in the subprime loan market in testimony before the committee. “I can’t help but to think how far we’ve come if we’re considering passing a law that tells lenders not to give mortgages to borrowers who can’t afford them,” she said. “This used to be second nature.”
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Defense Budget Holds the Line for Sub Production
DEFENSE BUDGET
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
5 February 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 – Spending on submarines would remain level despite overall increased spending under the defense budget that was released Monday.
One additional Virginia Class submarine would be built in fiscal year 2008, while the Navy’s submarine research budget would be cut.
“With the number of submarines being retired, we’re not just holding steady, we’re going backwards,” said Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn. “It’s almost a crisis. It’s the first time in 50 years that we haven’t had a new class of submarine designed.”
Rear Admiral Stan Bozin, director of the Navy’s Office of the Budget, said that requirements, risk analysis, and tradeoffs are taken into consideration in putting together the budget.
“When all is said and done, we have more requirements than we have money, and we make our tradeoffs,” Bozin said.
John Markowicz, president of Southeastern Connecticut Enterprise Region in New London, said that a cut in research won’t harm the region as much as stagnant submarine production.
“The bread and butter of the defense economy in southeastern Connecticut is the folks who work for and support Electric Boat,” Markowicz said.
Markowicz said while he understands the fiscal reality, stagnant submarine growth could threaten national defense, especially in terms of emerging threats in the Far East, particularly China.
“This is a vital asset that is being depleted at a rate of three to four a year, and only being replaced at the rate of one a year,” he said. “The current force is unable to perform the tasks that fleet commanders are asking them to perform.”
But Bob Hamilton, communications director of Electric Boat, said that it is too early in the budget process to determine future impact.
“The budget will change a lot between now and when the president signs it,” Hamilton said.
“We know that the Navy will procure one sub a year until 2012,” he said. “It’s up to the Navy and Congress to make the decisions. They place the order and we make the subs.”
“Bush’s budget will continue the erosion of the American defense submarine infrastructure,” Courtney said. “It’s clear that Bush’s policies are depleting other critical areas of the defense budget. Our country’s military readiness is being damaged by short-term operations in Iraq.”
The procurement and research and development budget for the Virginia Class submarine in fiscal year 2008 is more than $2.7 billion, while the overall baseline defense research budget is nearly $140 billion.
President Bush requested $481.4 billion for the Department of Defense’s base budget, reflecting an 11.3 percent increase over fiscal year 2007. He requested an additional $141.7 billion to fight the “Global War on Terror,” the first time this expense has been built into the budget at the beginning of the fiscal year.
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Sen. Dodd Will Propose Paid Leave for Workers
LEAVE
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
01 February 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 —Employers and the federal government would pay workers for up to six weeks of family and medical leave if the proposal that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) announced Thursday becomes law.
Dodd said the cost of paid leave would be shared by the employers, employees and the government, but he did not provide a specific breakdown.
The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, which Dodd originally sponsored, allows employees to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave with a guarantee of returning to their original job.
He said he had no plans to cut back the existing law, but he offered no specifics on the length of paid leave allowed under the new proposal except to note that most employees who take family or medical leave need only six weeks.
Dodd said that though the current law has been successful, its benefits have not been extended to the entire workforce.
“The evidence in favor of [the existing law] is overwhelming in terms of worker productivity, retention and loyalty,” Dodd said. “No one benefits when children go to school sick because a parent can’t stay home to care for them.”
But Dodd added that families without sufficient economic resources cannot take advantage of the law. This, he said, is the reason he is now calling for paid leave to aid families who cannot otherwise afford to take time off.
Tony Sheridan, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut, applauded Dodd’s proposal, although he said there will probably be an outcry from the business community.
“There is a great need to have a package of benefits that will encourage and support those in the workforce,” he said. “People are working harder than ever, and there is a need to be concerned about our children. The business community has families too.”
Sheridan said the proposal is a good start. “All great decisions begin with conversation,” he said.
Representatives of locally based companies Electric Boat, Foxwoods Resort Casino and Pfizer said they would not comment on the proposal until Dodd presents more specifics. The bill has not yet been drafted, but Dodd said details would be announced in the next few weeks.
Dodd, who has proposed similar legislation in previous congresses, said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) will co-sponsor the bill.
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Conn. Residents Protest in Washington Against the War
RALLY CT
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
27 January 2007
WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 – Two busloads of war protesters from Southeastern Connecticut descended Saturday on the National Mall to join tens of thousands of others from around the country to oppose the war in Iraq.
Dawn Davis, an English as a Second Language teacher in Norwich, said one of the reasons she came to Washington is because she wants her students to know that she is being proactive.
“A lot of the students I teach are from war-torn countries,” she said. “It’s important for people to know that we are not a complacent population.”
Davis said she thinks the rally will be able to affect change. “The impact takes a while, but it will happen,” she said.
Virginia Levasseur, a first grade teacher in Norwich, agreed.
“We need to encourage Congress to take a more diplomatic path,” she said, adding that she thinks the protesters gain encouragement by seeing the number of people present, which was estimated to be around 100,000.
“I think it’s encouraging for the people here to feel a little bit of hope,” Levasseur said, adding she has been to eight other rallies since the Iraq War started. “I’ve seen so many demonstrations, but the more people that rally, the more that will begin to believe in peace.”
Kevin Lamontagne, a construction worker from Canterbury, said he hopes public opinion will shift government policies.
“Our primary goal is to let the new members of Congress know that there is plenty of opposition,” Lamontagne said, holding a sign that read “Deploy Bush, Bring our troops home now.”
“If nobody showed up [at the rally], politicians would feel there is no public pressure to do anything,” he said. “The fact that there are members of Congress here shows there is already support to bring the troops home,” Lamontagne said, referring to Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said in an interview that marching to Congress is appropriate. “Congress sets public opinion and controls the purse strings, so marching to Congress is the right thing to do,” he said before the protesters began their march to the Capitol building.
Kevin Lamontagne’s brother Pete Lamontagne, of Norwich, said that the force of public opinion goes beyond the march.
“The politicians know that for every person that shows up here in Washington, there are 20 or 30 people that couldn’t make it or didn’t have the courage to come,” he said. “It is our right and patriotic duty to be here and protest.”
The two busloads of people left Willimantic at midnight Friday night and arrived in Washington after 8 a.m.
Other attendees included actors Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, and Sean Penn.
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Dodd Talks About Towns With Lots of Tax-Exempt Properties
DODD
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
25 January 2007
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 – Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said he does not have any legislation to aid cities like New London that are short on public funds because of a lot of tax-exempt property.
“It’s an issue we talk about all the time, but we still have no answers for it,” Dodd said in an interview after his speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Wednesday night.
“New London gets hit hard because of the size of the community and the dominance of non-profits,” he said, citing the Coast Guard Academy, Connecticut College, and hospitals as examples.
“In New London, we’ve talked about this for as long as I’ve been in public life,” Dodd said. “It’s an issue that has never been fully resolved because both sides are afraid of the answer.”
Those favoring levying taxes on the exempt institutions worry that the courts will over-rule them, Dodd said. At the same time, he noted, those opposing such new taxes fear that they would be ruled allowed.
“Both sides stare at each other over this divide without really wanting to pursue the answer,” he said. “Instead of doing that let’s try to come up with a formula that allows you contribute to the extent you can to the community.”
But Dodd said that New London has great potential for economic growth and development because of its location and amenities.
“We may have Coast Guard museum coming in,” he said. “But you’ve got Pfizer coming in too now in an area that only had very little development a few years ago,” he said.
In his speech to the mayors, Dodd, who is the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, outlined proposals ranging from promoting homeownership and increasing security on public transportation, to fighting predatory lending and expanding access to financial services.
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Woodstock Reservist Attends State of the Union
GUEST
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
24 January 2007
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 – Woodstock resident and Navy Reserve Cmdr. Kenneth Goldsmith had the opportunity to see politics and policymakers up close Tuesday night as the guest of Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) at the State of the Union Address.
Each member of Congress gets to invite one person to sit in the visitors gallery of the House of Representatives for the president’s State of the Union address. The 43-year-old reservist said that the congressman’s invitation came as a surprise. “I saw ‘U.S. Capitol’ on my phone, and I couldn’t imagine what it could be,” he said.
Goldsmith, a member of the Woodstock Democratic Town Committee, said he met Courtney about two years ago during the early days of Courtney’s campaign. “We talked about health care issues for military reservists and hit it off,” he said. “We’ve been friends since.”
Courtney agreed, saying that he has gotten to know Goldsmith well over the past two years. “He has served in both active duty and the reserves at great cost and hardship to his family,” Courtney said. “This is a small thank you for his service.”
The congressman, who is on the Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, said that Goldsmith, as a member of the military, will be an important contact for him as he begins his term.
Goldsmith, a pilot in the Navy Reserves, said he would like to get involved in advancing issues specific to eastern Connecticut. “I would love to be involved with efforts that help advance economic development and the military and to continue to work on topics concerning military reservists and national guardsmen,” he said.
Although he has been an advocate for health insurance reform for military reservists, Goldsmith said he was not in Washington to lobby. “I am just an honored guest here to represent my district at the State of the Union,” he said.
Until last year, military reservists and national guardsmen could not get health insurance from the government unless they were called to active duty, posing a problem for reservists like Goldsmith who do primarily military work and therefore did not have coverage from another employer.
“At the time, a quarter of reservists and their families did not have access to health insurance,” Goldsmith said. “Even I went through a time that I didn’t have health insurance.”
Since then, access to the military health insurance program has been drastically improved, Goldsmith said. Coverage is now extended to reservists and guardsmen who do not receive insurance from an employer or spouse.
Commenting as a private citizen, Goldsmith said he thought Bush’s address left important healthcare issues unaccounted for. “We have a long way to go on healthcare,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing this Congress tackle the challenge.”
But both Courtney and Goldsmith said during an interview after the address that they were happy to hear the President’s proposal for an increase in the size of the active Army and Marine Corps.
“The frozen level of troops on active duty has shifted the burden to reservists like [Goldsmith],” Courtney said. “Now we have the opportunity to take some of that burden off.”
Again speaking as a civilian, Goldsmith said that an increase in troop strength will increase the military’s effectiveness. “And it will allow us to have a presence in places where American interests are at stake,” he said.
Goldsmith, a Harvard graduate, has been in the military since finishing college. He pursued Officer Candidate School and entered into active duty in the Navy. “I finished my final exams and two weeks later I was having my head shaved and doing pushups,” he said.
During his eight years of active duty, which included two six-month tours of the Persian Gulf, Goldsmith completed missions ranging from enforcing no-fly zones in Iraq and peace-keeping efforts in Somalia, to helping evacuate American citizens from the Philippines after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
After the military drawdown in 1994, Goldsmith left active duty, and has been in the Navy Reserves ever since. In March, he will be deployed to Bahrain for a three-week tour.
Goldsmith, who was born in Windham and grew up in North Branford, is a third-year law student at the University of Connecticut. He serves on the board of directors of Northeast Economic Alliance, a non-profit organization that helps new and expanding small businesses, and is an elected member of the Woodstock Planning and Zoning Commission.
Goldsmith said that he and his wife Traci, an interior designer, will open a new furniture and design store in Tolland next week. The Goldsmiths have three daughters, aged 14, 13, and 11.
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Pig Book Shows $78 Million Went to Deepwater Replacement Vessel
PIGBOOK
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
7 March 2007
WASHINGTON, March 7—A group that opposes government waste listed as pork-barrel spending the nearly $79 million that has been authorized for a Coast Guard patrol boat as a temporary replacement needed because the Coast Guard’s huge new Deepwater fleet modernization program is running well behind schedule.
Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-partisan, non-profit government watch group, released its 2007 Congressional Pig Book Wednesday – as two live pigs ran around the conference room – detailing all pork-barrel spending in the federal budget. The patrol boat was the 22nd-most expensive project on the group’s list of nearly 2,700 pork-barrel spending items.
This year’s pork-barrel spending – which the organization described as appropriations added to legislation, often anonymously, to fund constituent projects that otherwise might not receive government spending – is only half of last year’s reported pork-barrel spending.
But unlike previous annual reports, this year’s was confined to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. Appropriations bills for those two departments were the only ones Congress passed last year. Money for all other agencies and programs were included in an omnibus spending bill enacted this year after congressional leaders imposed a moratorium on earmarks.
David Williams, vice president for policy for Citizens Against Government Waste, said the way the money was appropriated for the patrol boat – by being anonymously attached to the Homeland Security Appropriations Act – qualifies it for the Pig Book.
“There is probably a need for the patrol boat, but it made the Pig Book list because management and oversight of Deepwater has been horrendous,” Williams said. “Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin [the joint venture that heads Deepwater] have been running a amok with taxpayer dollars.”
“We’re not opposed to them building the thing; there just needs to be more oversight,” Williams said. “There needs to be a budget request for it to be a legitimate priority.”
Williams said he hopes the new House rules will help to identify who adds earmarks to appropriations bills. The House enacted rules in January requiring members to go on the record to sponsor earmarks. Under the new rules, they are prohibited from trading their votes for spending projects and are required to avow that they have no personal financial stake in their requests.
Citizens Against Government Waste President Tom Schatz said he hopes these changes become permanent, noting that this year’s pork-barrel spending is at its lowest since 1999. “Pork, as Sen. [Tom] Coburn (R-Okla.) says, is the gateway drug to wasteful spending,” Schatz said during the press conference.
Sen. James DeMint (R-S.C.), speaking at the press conference, agreed the reforms need to be made permanent. “It’s like killing a snake,” he said. “We’re not really sure if it’s dead.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a long-time advocate of earmark reform, also agreed during his statement at the press conference. “The Republican Party lost the last election because of our failure to control spending,” he said, alluding to the scandal during which former Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.) pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2 million in bribes.
McCain said he was glad to hear that President Bush announced he wants to cut half of all earmarks, but lamented, “I don’t exactly know how to cut half of them – it’s like saying get rid of half the drug dealers.”
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