Thursday, November 16, 2006
Editorial: Pelosi's unholy House alliance
If the House speaker-to-be truly wants ethics reforms, supporting John Murtha doesn't show it.
From the RoundTable blog
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Little more than a week ago, a triumphant Rep. Nancy Pelosi promised an ethics House-cleaning by the ascendant Democrats.
Today, party members in the House are set to elect their leaders. In a hard-fought contest for majority leader, Speaker-to-be Pelosi is throwing her clout behind ... the ethically challenged John Murtha.
Pelosi thus fails her first leadership test.
Murtha, a longtime congressman beloved for bringing home the bacon to his Pennsylvania district, was sullied in the Abscam bribery scandal of 1980. He escaped indictment -- "I'm the guy who didn't take the money," he likes to say -- but was named a co-conspirator.
Questions about his ethical compass are hardly limited to that bit of Washington history, though. Democrats and Republicans alike go to Murtha as the dealmaker for getting earmarks in pork-clogged defense appropriations bills, The New York Times reports.
Even in the years of GOP control, Murtha shamelessly snagged his own share of earmarks as the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee's Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
Companies represented by a lobbying firm founded by a former subcommittee staff member got at least 60 earmarks, totaling $95 million, in the 2006 Defense appropriations bill alone.
That according to the liberal Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which also notes PMA Group and its clients are among Murtha's top campaign contributors.
The watchdog group reported in September that a lobbying firm where Murtha's brother, Kit, works also gets good results for clients. Murtha did not make CREW's list of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress this year, but he was among five dishonorable mentions.
He also was one of only four Democrats whose votes helped kill a strong Democratic ethics reform plan this year.
After voters last week turned out a Republican majority corrupted by power and unduly influenced by K Street, Pelosi promised: "The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history."
Her support of her old political ally, Murtha, for the No. 2 leadership post in the House speaks louder than her words.
Here's hoping that, for this inauspicious beginning, Pelosi's party does not follow her lead.
