The Wall Street Journal reports on the stunning success of Representative John Murtha in channeling taxpayer dollars to pork-barrel projects in his district, including awards for companies under FBI investigation and others which show no results, as well as many for projects the Pentagon did not request.
Johnstown’s good fortune has come at the expense of taxpayers everywhere else. Defense contractors have found that if they open an office here and hire the right lobbyist, they can get lucrative, no-bid contracts. Over the past decade, Concurrent Technologies Corp., a defense-research firm that employs 800 here, got hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to Rep. Murtha despite poor reviews by Pentagon auditors. The National Drug Intelligence Center, with 300 workers, got $509 million, though the White House has tried for years to shut it down as wasteful and unnecessary. Another beneficiary: MTS Technologies, run by a man who got his start some 40 years ago shining shoes at Mr. Murtha’s Johnstown Minute Car Wash. A review by The Wall Street Journal of dozens of such contracts funded by Mr. Murtha’s committee shows that many weren’t sought by the military or federal agencies they were intended to benefit. Some were inefficient or mismanaged, according to interviews, public records and previously unpublished Pentagon audits. One Murtha-backed firm, ProLogic Inc., is under federal investigation for allegedly diverting public funds to develop commercial software, people close to the case say. The company denies wrongdoing and is in line to get millions of dollars more in the pending defense bill.
Is any of this a surprise? It is entirely consistent with Murtha’s whole career. We’ve covered the fact that Murtha has received donations from every interest to which he granted an earmark–many in the last few days before he introduced the earmarks in legislation. He’s funneled money to a group headed by a former staffer which supposedly helps wounded veterans find jobs–but there’s no evidence that they’ve helped anyone. He falsely claimed that the Department of Energy supported one of his earmarks. He falsely claimed Department of Justice support for another. He’s threatened his colleagues. He’s broken House rules to get earmarks. And all that is merely this year! We have not yet touched upon Haditha, or ‘slow-bleed,’ or the draft, or AbScam.
Ed Morrissey has done some research on how Mr. Murtha is spending your tax dollars:
Let’s take a look at the beneficiaries of Murtha by using the invaluable tool, Fedspending.org. According to the data, the contracts awarded for performance in Murtha’s district in 2006 hardly display a model of government accountability. Only 23% were awarded as competitive bids. That comprises $32 million out of $136 million spent in Johnstown that year. For 2007, the numbers are even worse. Only 15% — $27 million out of $174 million — came from open, multibid competition. In the past three years, Murtha has sent $352 million directly back to his district, and only 19% of those contracts had multibid competition. One of his biggest beneficiaries has been Concurrent Technologies, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts every year from the federal government, thanks to the intercession of Murtha. How has CT won its contracts? Almost entirely through non-competitive means. In 2006, only 19% of their contracts had another bidder, but that beats 2005 and 2007, which has 5% and 4%, respectively. In contrast, Halliburton’s parent KBR won 95% of its contracts in multibid competition in 2005, 93% in 2006, and 99.4% in 2007.
Is this what the voters of Pennsylvania expect from their Congressman?
