This should be a major campaign issue for the Dems.
Stimulating Hypocrisy: Scores of Recovery Act Opponents Sought Money Out of Public View
By John Solomon and Aaron Mehta
Rep. Pete Sessions, the firebrand conservative from Dallas, Texas, has relentlessly assailed the Democratic-passed stimulus law as a wasteful "trillion dollar spending spree" that was "more about stimulating the government and rewarding political allies than growing the economy and creating jobs."
But that didn’t stop the Republican lawmaker from reaching his hand out behind the scenes to seek stimulus money for the suburb of Carrollton after the camera lights went dark and the GOP campaign against the 2009 stimulus law quieted down.
The affluent city’s rail project is “shovel-ready,” Sessions wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in February, urging his cabinet agency to give “full and fair consideration” to the city’s request for $81 million in stimulus money, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Center for Public Integrity. Ironically, his letter suggested the project would create jobs, undercutting the very public argument he has made against the stimulus.
“Carrollton’s project will create jobs, stimulate the economy, improve regional mobility and reduce pollution,” the lawmaker wrote.
When asked about the letter, Sessions suggested to the Center that he did not want his “strong, principled objection to the bill to prevent me” from getting his congressional district its share of the massive spending pot.
Sessions was hardly alone.
Scores of Republicans and conservative Democrats who voted against the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act subsequently wrote letters requesting funds for projects in a massive, behind-the-scenes letter-writing and phone call campaign, documents obtained by the Center show.
Those asking for money include Tea Party favorites like freshman Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., former presidential candidates Ron Paul and John McCain and Republican congressional leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana.
Many Democratic leaders who had boasted they prevented lawmakers from inserting special spending requests in the stimulus law when it passed also engaged in the behind-the-scenes letter writing to secure funding afterwards, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Rep. Brad Ellsworth, the Indiana Democrat now running for U.S. Senate, originally voted against the stimulus plan but later came around to cautiously supporting it. He collected $6,500 in donations from Duke Energy’s political action committee in the months just before and after he wrote an August 2009 letter supporting the utility giant’s ultimately successful request for an Energy Department grant, the Center found. Ellsworth’s office declined comment.
The letters particularly dismay conservative advocacy groups like the Tea Party and Americans for Tax Reform that have been backing Republicans in the fall election but now see a touch of hypocrisy among candidates they thought were conservative champions of federal spending cuts.
“The GOP should not be taking this money and spending it regardless of where it came from,” said Rob Gaudet, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots. “They should be fighting against it with every fiber of their elected beings.”
Mattie Corrao, the Executive Director of Americans for Tax Reform’s Center for Fiscal Accountability, said the letters show “it’s about self-interest” when it comes to federal spending.
“Politicians just want to keep their jobs,” she said. “In no way should anyone be buying into that failed argument
. But the case is the money is going somewhere, and people who want to stay elected and see it as politically beneficial are going to do it.”
Over the last year, isolated reports of lawmakers and governors seeking funds from a single agency handing out stimulus money have surfaced in the news media. The Center set out to determine how widespread the practice was and who engaged in it.
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Read the rest at: http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2532/
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