The $15 million earmark that no one knows anything about

by: Jason Springer

Fri Aug 28, 2009 at 04:15:00 PM EDT

The Daily Record is looking into earmarks and they seem to have found a sizeable one that no one knows anything about:

Our interest here, however, has to do with the Washington custom of earmarks, the practice of lawmakers adding appropriations to budget bills for favored projects in their state or district. In total, earmarks often represent billions of dollars in federal spending. Earlier this year, Rep. Steve Rothman, D-Bergen, proposed a $15 million earmark for Insitech. That's a lot of money for a non-profit trying to attract firms to do business with the army. The earmark has not been approved yet, but the new federal budget does not start until Oct. 1.
Here's where things get interesting. A spokesman for Rothman told the Daily Record last week that she didn't know anything about the earmark. InSitech's CEO said he couldn't talk about it, and spokesmen for Picatinny and Rep. Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, R-Harding, who normally proposes earmarks for the base, said they were unaware of it.
How fascinating that a proposed expenditure of $15 million in federal money is so easy to lose.

That's a lot of money for no one to know anything about. There has to be more to this story, because something doesn't add up. And how does Frelinghuysen have a significant amount of money earmarked for his district and he has no idea bout it? That's effective representation.

Jason Springer :: The $15 million earmark that no one knows anything about

Tags: earmarks, Steve Rothman, Rodney Frelinghuysen, insitech, army, (All Tags)

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The $15 million earmark that no one knows anything about | 3 comments

Dumb (0.00 / 0)

That Daily Record piece is a really stupid piece of so-called reporting. What happened to the real journalists?

Since when does a legitimate newspaper publish one single obtuse fact and two non-responses and call its inference of wrongdoing "news"?

I guess since the media corporations laid off all their real journalists.

Let's start with tracking back the document with the earmark. When was it added to the bill? A spokeswoman didn't personally know about it, but the dumbass "reporter" should have asked Rothman, then. The so-called "reporter" should have put in a FOIA.

He should have gotten a fact or two before he went off half-cocked with nothing but inference. Shameful.

by: Jim33 @ Fri Aug 28, 2009 at 23:54:15 PM UTC

what? (0.00 / 0)

It sounds like the earmark doesn't exist. I agree with Jim.

Frank LoBiondo Record and Jon Runyan Watch

by: Hopeful @ Sat Aug 29, 2009 at 02:32:42 AM UTC

Hidden In Plain Sight.... (0.00 / 0)

....right here (and there's even another one in Morris!)

Defense Appropriators Seek More Than $1.2 Billion In Earmarks
Defense Daily, April 16, 2009
In addition to Bishop, three other HAC-D members disclosed requesting more than $100 million in defense earmarks: Reps. James Moran (D-Va.), Steven Rothman (D-N.J.), and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio).......
........ Rothman cites 23 defense-related earmark requests totaling $125.39 million on his Web site. His list includes a $15 million earmark for Picatinny Arsenal, N.J.-based InSitech, Inc., to be used on a program that helps small businesses compete for defense contracts. Rothman also wants $10 million for an electronic-warfare system from Honeywell Electronic Protection Products [HON] in Morristown, N.J.

Frankly, the whole "earmark" system comes across as political slush funding to me. The procurement process needs to be implemented by objective professionals who are smart, informed, honest patriots who will only buy what we really need to get the missions accomplished and buy at the best price possible.

The job of congress should be to watch over, i.e. exercise oversight, over the vendors and the procurement bureaucracy.

Rothman's choice to unilaterally give this money to these entities may in fact be a purely innocent and righteous spending of the people's money in service to our collective best interests. On the other hand, it's very tempting to think that maybe somewhere along the line someone is doing someone else some kind of favor in return for some kind of consideration at some point in the future or in exchange for some favor done at some point in the past.......or maybe it's just a matter of helping a friend.

None of that could be picked up as a direct quid pro quo; even if it was "understood" on the level of winks and nods.

And let us not think that Rothman is the only person in congress who uses earmarks.

No doubt, that Rothman will come out with to strong prima facie case for these earmarks, the man is extremely bright and I doubt this was some kind of coarse transaction; my larger point is that the whole SYSTEM is corrosive and corrupting of the integrity of governance.

by: Nick Lento @ Sat Aug 29, 2009 at 03:38:41 AM UTC