• Rep. Jack Murtha's $39 million per year "boondoggle"

• Democrat's Secret Hospital Pork

• Rep. Charlie Rangel’s “Monument to Me”

• Democrats' $1 Million Woodstock Flashback

• Murtha Inc. Gets Made

As House Democrats broke the rules and stole votes in their rush to complete work before the month-long August recess, one item received lots of attention: pork.
 
In the middle of a hot August night, Democrat leaders “quietly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to specific hospitals and health care providers.” It took an eagle-eye to spot these earmarks in a 465-page health care bill, so much so The New York Times said finding and identifying them was “like solving a riddle.” The hospital earmarks and the lawmakers who requested them were not listed in the bill as House rules require. But try as the Democrats might, no one was fooled. The St. Petersburg Times said “these not-so-hidden earmarks appear to be nothing more than ‘hospital pork.’”
 
Republicans tried to challenge these earmarks in public, but Democrat leaders forbid congressional debate on earmarks slipped into authorization bills like the one that carried the hospital pork.
 
House Republicans believe EVERY earmark should be debatable on the House floor; Democrats want to keep them secret.
 
House Republicans are circulating a petition on the House Floor that would force Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow all earmarks to be debated and publicly scrutinized. So far, 193 Republicans have signed it. The petition requires 218 signatures; it will not succeed without the support of fiscally responsible Democrats. To date, no Democrat has signed it.
 

What They Said About the Democrats’ “Hospital Pork”

• “Despite promises by Congress to end the secrecy of earmarks and other pet projects, the House of Representatives has quietly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to specific hospitals and health care providers under a bill passed this month to help low-income children. Instead of naming the hospitals, the bill describes them in cryptic terms, so that identifying a beneficiary is like solving a riddle. Most of the provisions were added to the bill at the request of Democratic lawmakers … Some Republicans have complained about what they call ‘hospital pork.” Representative Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas, said the bill was ‘littered with earmarks for hospital-specific projects’ … Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who is chairman of the subcommittee, acknowledged that ‘it’s hard to decipher’ the cryptic language used in the bill to identify specific hospitals.” (New York Times, 8/12/07)

• "FOR THE PURPOSES OF MEDICARE, THIS HOSPITAL IS LOCATED IN CHICAGO’ … According to the article this is how it works. A hospital located 40 miles, maybe 200 miles outside a major U.S. city like Chicago or New York, is for the purposes of Medicare given a Chicago or New York address which enables the hospitals to get much higher Medicare payments than they normally would qualify for if they applied using their real addresses. The NYT did some investigating and came up with some of the names of hospitals and the members who want to get them some EXTRA TAXPAYER DOLLARS.” (ABC News, “Politics as Usual” blog, 8/13/07)

• “Congressional Democrats promised they would end the practice of secret earmarks, in which individual members add something to a bill that helps an influential constituent back home. They even passed an ethics rule that says pet projects hidden in legislation will be disclosed before a vote. As legendary newspaper columnist Franklin Pierce Adams warned, however, if you believe that you're being played for a fool … A major bill to expand health care for uninsured children and boost Medicare benefits was loaded with earmarks in disguise, nearly all for Democratic members who revealed nothing before the bill passed … As for Medicare, certainly the reimbursement rate for doctors and hospitals is a legitimate issue, particularly at a time when hospital revenues are being squeezed. Yet these not-so-hidden earmarks appear to be nothing more than "hospital pork," as critics call them … Looks as though Democrats are the fools this time. (St. Petersburg Times, editorial, 8/15/07)

Read more: Rep. Jack Murtha’s $39 Million “Boondoggle”