Nancy Pelosi adds 15 Earmarks to Defense Spending Bill

  U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last year that she would be happy to “do away with” the practice of funding members’ pet projects

  One of the issues that Democrats ran on was eliminating earmarks in bills. Cutting down on pork barrel spending. Now it becomes obvious that they must have meant Republican earmarks.

Thousands of so-called earmarks still adorn spending bills, including 15 from Pelosi in a defense measure.

  15 earmarks alone for Pelosi in one bill, this is what you call “doing away with” pork barrel spending?

  What’s her excuse? I’m glad you asked.

Democrats, who never promised to abolish the practice altogether

  They never promised to abolish them altogether is the excuse. What can we read into that? I read into it that they are saying they want to do away with Republican earmarks. You see, the Democrats are so damned smart and their earmarks are for the common good. We cannot question their earmarks because they know what is best for us, unlike the evil Republicans. Nancy Pelosi added 15 earmarks to one bill for our own good, doesn’t that make you feel better?

So where do Pelosi’s earmarks go?

Some companies stand to gain from Pelosi’s earmarks. The California Democrat has won funding for six companies in a 2008 defense funding measure. One is a $4 million request to develop a “novel viral biowarfare agent” for Prosetta Corp., based in her San Francisco district. Tom Higgins, the company’s chief executive officer, says he talked to the Speaker’s staff directly rather than hiring a lobbyist and hasn’t given money to her campaign. “We’re just a little company,” he says.

Another of Pelosi’s earmarks was $2.5 million to Bioquiddity, Inc., a San Francisco biotech company with nine employees, to continue developing drug-infusion pumps. Bioquiddity President Josh Kriesel, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the state legislature in 2002, has donated $6,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee since last September. The company received a total of $3.9 million in earmarks in the last two years. Kriesel declined to comment directly on the earmarks.

  To private companies. Is there something wrong here, I would think so. A republican response:

“It baffles me how people can complain bitterly about Halliburton and no-bid contracts and then lard up a bill with literally thousands of earmarks to companies when that’s all they are — no-bid contracts,” says Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, referring to criticism of the Bush administration’s sole-source contract with the Houston-based company during the Iraq war. Flake is noted for not requesting earmarks and publicizing those of his colleagues.

`Circular Fund Raising’

“So many of these companies turn around and give campaign contributions right back to the sponsor of the earmark,” Flake says. “This kind of circular fund raising is unbelievable.”

  In effect Nancy Pelosi is rewarding companies in a sort of no bid fashion reminiscent of Halliburton. Where is the outcry? I don’t hear it.

You can read the full article here.