Monday, December 10, 2007
In Case You Missed It: Clinton Rolls A Sizable Pork Barrel
From Los Angeles Times
By Tom Hamburger and Dan Morain
December 10, 2007
[T]o fuel her rise, Clinton has relied on the controversial funding device known as "earmarking." The earmarks enabled her to win favor with important constituents, many of whom provided financial support for her campaigns. ...
[S]he collected tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the developer and others associated with the project. ...
Since taking office in 2001, Clinton has delivered $500 million worth of earmarks that have specifically benefited 59 corporations. About 64% of those corporations provided funds to her campaigns through donations made by employees, executives, board members or lobbyists, a review by the Los Angeles Times shows.
All told, Clinton has earmarked more than $2.3 billion in federal appropriations for projects in her state since her election to the Senate ...
[C]linton does significantly more earmarking than most others with her relatively low level of seniority. ...
For example, in the appropriations bills that have passed the Senate so far this year, Clinton earmarked 216 separate projects for a total of $236.6 million. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) secured $112.8 million; Obama earmarked $90.4 million, and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) earmarked projects totaling $70.8 million.
Since Clinton arrived in the Senate, she has collected in excess of $1 million from earmark beneficiaries and their associates.
"This pattern shows that Clinton has made aggressive use of the pay-to-play earmark game," said Keith Ashdown, research director for the Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington. ...
Critics of earmarking object that it remains a relatively closed process that adds billions in spending directives, often over the objection of the president and Cabinet departments. ...
Clinton supported those basic reforms, but she and other Democratic senators running for president balked at a proposal by Obama that would have required members to disclose their proposed earmark requests, not just those that were enacted into law. ...
Because of her perch on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton has been able to earmark $1.4 billion for defense contractors in New York state since she arrived in the Senate, including $140 million this year, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. Her record of home-state defense earmarking on that panel is second only to that of Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who is chairman of the committee and has served in the Senate since 1979.
Clinton has raised more than $270,000 for her campaigns from defense companies with New York operations that have received federal money with her help. ...
Clinton has delivered multimillion-dollar defense earmarks to a company making improvements to bomb racks for B1 fighter jets; to a small Buffalo-area firm that provides anticorrosive coating to military vehicles; and to the Manhattan-based New School University for a defense mapping project. Individuals associated with these entities have donated to her campaign.
New School, which received $1.6 million in this year's defense budget and $6 million previously, is particularly well-connected. Its president, former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), is campaigning for Clinton in Iowa. Three school trustees are among Clinton's most prominent backers, having each raised at least $100,000 for her campaign. A former trustee is Norman Hsu, who was indicted on fraud charges last week. After Hsu's criminal past was revealed last summer, Clinton returned $850,000 he raised for her. ...
With the exception of McCain, the presidential candidates who are members of the Senate all raised campaign funds from earmark beneficiaries, though none came close to Clinton. Obama, for example, received $10,000 from trustees of the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, for which he secured a federal grant. ...
Among other Democratic presidential candidates who serve in the Senate, there is a correlation between donations and earmarks for private entities, though none of the contenders have been as consistent as Clinton. ...
Clinton's notable earmark activity is not explained solely by the fact that she represents a populous state. The extent of her earmarking far outstrips that of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), for example, who represents a larger state. Boxer secured $79 million in earmarks this year, according to the taxpayers group.
Like all presidential candidates, Clinton places a premium on bundlers, people who use their networks of friends and associates to raise large sums of money. Clinton singles out people who raise $100,000 or more as "Hillraisers."
At least eight Hillraisers are affiliated with recipients of her earmarks. One is James Flaws, chief financial officer of one of New York's major employers, Corning Inc. ... [C]orning employees have given Clinton $236,000 since 1999, including $106,000 for her presidential campaign. ...
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