Rep. Flake presses on in earmark probe

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) is vowing to continue to hammer the ethics committee about its review of a pay-to-play earmark scandal in the wake of a Democratic attempt to silence his inquiries.

Democrats on Thursday evening used a parliamentary maneuver to refer a resolution Flake authored to the ethics committee on a near-party-line vote of 397-0, with 12 members voting present.

{mosads}The move was an attempt to shut down Flake’s scrutiny of a recent ethics committee report exonerating lawmakers with ties to PMA Group, a lobbying firm known for showering members with campaign cash in return for receiving multimillion-dollar earmarks for clients.

Flake has expressed deep frustration over the brevity of the ethics panel’s PMA Group report. His resolution called on the ethics panel to show its hand and produce the work behind the report, including how many subpoenas the committee sent out.

Ethics watchdogs have criticized the five-page report that includes no documents; evidence of interviews conducted as a whitewash of a serious and wide-ranging pay-to-play scandal involving members of the Appropriations Defense subcommittee; the tens of millions of dollars in earmarks they doled out to PMA Group clients; and the campaign contributions they received in return.

Flake is vowing to continue to offer a version of the resolution every two days — including this weekend — until the committee addresses questions surrounding its investigation of the PMA Group and whether it did any in-depth investigative work on it.

“This shouldn’t take a lot of time — it should take two minutes to show how many subpoenas they issued by just saying, ‘Here are the documents,’ ” Flake said.

The ethics panel never announced an investigative subcommittee to look into the matter. According to ethics observers, the panel cannot issue subpoenas without convening an investigative subcommittee first.

Flake’s resolution comes at a difficult time for House Democratic leaders. Just last week, after enduring several bruising weeks in the press over ethics matters, Democrats imposed a moratorium on earmarks to for-profit companies. Republicans followed suit by imposing a ban on all earmarks, including those in authorization, tax and transportation bills.

Last year, Democrats fended off nine different attempts by Flake to shake the ethics committee into action on the PMA issue. Each time, however, more Democrats sided with Flake, including 29 Democrats in May of last year. Eventually, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) offered his own resolution referring the matter to the ethics committee, the same political maneuver used Thursday. In that case, the political pressure was too intense for the ethics committee to ignore, and the panel announced that it was looking into the matter.