Editorial: If we're going to complain about federal waste, let's not leave out Johnstown's Rep. Murtha

By Editorial Staff, Harrisburg Patriot-News

November 2, 2007

Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha deserves utmost respect for his decorated combat service, and his voice on defense and military issues is one worth heeding.

But the Johnstown Democrat's gluttonous and unabashed appetite for pork also makes him a poster child for all that is wrong with the congressional appropriations process. No one in Pennsylvania can in good conscious criticize such boondoggles as the Alaskan "bridges to nowhere" without pointing the same sharp finger at Murtha.

As chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, Murtha has steered more money -- $166.5 million -- out of the pending $459 billion military-spending bill to the Johnstown area than any other congressional district in the country, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Murtha's a master of the "earmark," those pet projects and special interest items that lawmakers tuck into appropriations bills with little public scrutiny. Taxpayers for Common Sense estimates that Murtha has directed $600 million in earmarks to his district in the last four years. Over his 33 years in Congress, the Journal found, many of his earmarks were for projects opposed by the Pentagon and other federal agencies as inefficient or unnecessary.

Earmarks have become the way of doing business in Washington, where they were perfected to an art form by the previous Republican Congress. But Murtha's use of them is almost legendary. Not only has he brought home the bacon, but the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, which recently listed Murtha as one of the most corrupt members of Congress, says he uses his power as subcommittee chairman to threaten to withhold earmarks for others who don't see certain political matters his way.

Murtha defends the earmark process as a good one. He says individual members of Congress are in the best position to determine how money should be doled out in their districts.

That could be, but it has little to so with this system, which shortchanges taxpayers whose representatives and senators lack the seniority necessary to take the lid off the cookie jar.

And that should serve as a warning to those in Murtha's district. Enjoy it while it lasts, because he won't be there forever. Someday the gravy train will be redirected by some other political bully. By Murtha's own philosophy, that's as it should be in Washington.