Murtha Earmark Highlights Growing Pattern of Abuses by House Democrats

Via email:

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) will offer a privileged resolution later today to force the full House to vote on whether to reprimand senior Democrat John Murtha (D-PA) for threatening Rogers on the House floor last week. The actions by Rep. Murtha constitute a violation of House rules which preclude Members from conditioning earmarks on another Member’s vote. Curiously, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) chose to defend Murtha yesterday even though – according to the Associated Press – Rep. Murtha DID NOT deny he violated House rules.

CongressDaily PM reports that Democratic leadership aides “want to make this go away as soon as possible,” but Rep. Murtha’s violation is part of a growing pattern of abuses that show the House has moved away from earmark reform under Democrats, rather than toward it. Today Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi to renew his longstanding request for a bipartisan working group tasked with recommending fair, sensible and understandable House ethics rules. As an example, the letter cites:

“Rep. John Murtha was recently able to secure tens of millions of dollars for a questionable project in his district by highly suspect methods that either flaunted the new rules without penalty or at best nominally complied with them – proving in either case how utterly ineffective the new rules really are.”

As has been reported previously, this is the second incident where Rep. Murtha has threatened a GOP member who dared challenge his questionable earmark, which has been deemed “an expensive and duplicative use of scarce federal drug enforcement resources,” according to the May 8 edition of The Hill. Fox News has also previously reported on his threat to Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), including the video of it on the House floor.

House Democrats have repeatedly promised the most “open and ethical” Congress in history. During a week when Democrats will bring up their lobbying and ethics reform bill, will they back Rep. Murtha and make a mockery of their own rules, or will they keep their pledge to the American people?