New Dem Rule Hits Old Dem DealerToday Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) will introduce a motion to rebuke Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) for breaking a House rule. The charge? Rogers says that Murtha threatened to deny Rogersâ earmarks for ânow and foreverâ in retaliation for Rogers’ opposition to one of Murtha’s pet projects. That’s a real threat coming from Murtha, who’s one of the senior appropriators in the House.
The thing is, Republicans used to do this all the time when they were in power. And that’s why the Democrats instituted the new rule this January, which prohibits denying or awarding earmarks (members’ targeted spending projects) based on a member’s vote.
But Murtha is, if anything, a creature of the old order, a lawmaker who opined to The New York Times that “deal making is what Congress is all about” and called the Democrats’ ethics reform bill “total crap.” You might say that Rogers’ allegation has the weight of credibility behind it. Murtha has declined to respond to the allegation, and Rogers, a former FBI agent, says he has a number of witnesses.
As Roll Call reports (sub. req.) today, this isn’t even the first time that Murtha went ballistic on a member who was so bold as to challenge his pork. Earlier this month, he was even caught on camera: attentive C-Span viewers might have seen Murtha on the House floor yelling and pointing at Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), who had just voted against funding the National Drug Intelligence Center in Murtha’s district (fortunately for Murtha, there’s no sound of the encounter).
Although he’s staying mum now, Murtha himself has been unabashed about his legendary pork barrelling in the past, even freely admitting about using his power over the earmarking process to punish lawmakers who cross him. This is from a New York Times profile last October:
Mr. Murtha can punish lawmakers, as well. Those who do not support the defense spending bill, for example, discover their next earmark requests go nowhere. ”Let me tell you the facts of life,” Mr. Murtha said he tells balky legislators. ”If you vote against this bill, you won’t have any input at all the next time.”…
He can also be very persuasive, thanks to his position on the spending committee. ”If Jack Murtha tells you he needs your vote, then you would have to think very hard before not delivering it,” said Representative James P. Moran, a Virginia Democrat who sits on the subcommittee and in Mr. Murtha’s corner. ”There are just too many chits out there.”…
Other lawmakers have learned not to cross him. Aides to Representative Allyson Y. Schwartz, a freshman from the Philadelphia suburbs, say she has become a regular in the Murtha corner in part because her predecessor, a reform-minded Democrat who sometimes clashed with Mr. Murtha, suffered in his ability to obtain earmarks. In contrast, Mr. Murtha has helped Ms. Schwartz obtain a $7 million contract for a local defense firm and $150,000 to refurbish a historic inn in her district.
Since Rogers’ motion is an embarassment to a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the Democrats’ staunchest opponent of the war, the motion passing would be even more embarrassing. That would explain why, as Roll Call notes, the Democrats are most likely to use a procedural tool to effectively kill it.
