Murtha sent earmark letter five weeks after deadline

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) submitted an earmark certification letter for the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) May 1, more than five weeks after the Intelligence Committee’s deadline and the day before the panel marked up its authorization bill, according to copies of the letter and the notice of the deadline sent to the entire committee.

Murtha addressed the letter only to Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), not Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the panel’s ranking member. Hoekstra has said he was not given a copy—an apparent violation of House rules. All earmarks must be disclosed in writing to both the chairman and ranking member.

{mosads}House Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to sneak the project into the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill’s approved list of earmarks as a way to insulate it from being targeted for removal on the House floor, a charge Democrats deny.

“There was a process put in place to handle earmarks,” one staffer asserted. “It happened before Murtha’s letter even came here.”    

Democrats counter that Republicans were well aware of the project. It was only late in the vetting process that Republican critics began to consider it an earmark because the center was funded in previous years, a congressional source said. Republicans deny this.

Republicans and Democrats also dispute when and whether Murtha was asked for the certification letter and why he submitted it so late.

Republicans argue that Murtha and Democrats should have been well aware of the March 23 deadline and that the NDIC project would require a certification letter. But another congressional source said that Republicans decided the project amounted to an earmark and asked Murtha to submit the letter well after the March 23 deadline. The source was not sure exactly when Republicans asked Murtha to supply the letter, but said that Reyes and Hoekstra met on April 26 to vet the earmark certification letters.

Murtha then sent his letter on May 1, within 24 hours of hearing that it was needed from Intelligence Committee Democrats, according to Murtha spokesman Matthew Mazonkey.

“The idea that [Hoesktra and Reyes] met earlier in March [to review the earmarks]…is wrong,” said one Hill source. 

Republicans have labeled the NDIC a “Clinton-era pork-barrel boondoggle” and said the additional $23 million slated for the project in the intelligence bill should be spent on hiring more intelligence officers. Their efforts to strip it from the bill failed in committee and on the House floor.

The NDIC, located in Murtha’s district, was slated for closure in the president's budget proposal for fiscal year 2008 after an Office of Management and Budget review concluded it duplicated other federal efforts.

Bitterness over Murtha’s certification letter played out between Reyes and Hoekstra on the House floor May 10.

“The process that was used for the earmarks on this bill did not follow all of the rules that we had agreed up in the committee and perhaps inconsistent with the rules of the House,” Hoekstra said.

Reyes responded that his aides had told him that the Murtha’s NDIC earmark was “discussed on a bipartisan basis” weeks before the panel marked up the bill.

But Hoekstra stood by his earlier statement.

“It is clear that there may be some confusion as to exactly what was or what was not discussed, but …[there was] at least one earmark that the chairman and myself never discussed,” said Hoekstra. “As a ranking member, I had never received what would have been identified as paperwork that went along with it.’

Controversy over the measure flared anew last Friday when Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) accused Murtha of threatening him on the House floor for offering a procedural motion to the 2008 intelligence bill that would have prevented funding for NDIC. Even though the effort failed, Rogers said Murtha approached him Thursday and angrily said: “I hope you don’t have an earmarks in the defense bills because they are gone and you will not get any earmarks now and forever.”

Rogers argues that the threat is a violation of House rules, which preclude members from conditioning earmarks on a members’ vote. He introduced a privileged resolution Monday night reprimanding Murtha for the threat, but Democrats postponed a vote on the measure. Democrats have a 48-hour window to decide whether the resolution’s claims are valid, which in turn would allow an hour of debate and a vote. One Democratic source said that a vote could come Tuesday.

Republicans have touted this latest incident as more evidence that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is failing on her promise to run the most ethical House in history. More broadly, Republicans charge that there is a growing pattern of abuses on the part of Democrats, and they led a revolt on the House floor late last week over alleged Democratic efforts to limit the GOP’s use of a procedural motion to thwart key Democratic measures.

Boehner sent a letter to Pelosi Monday charging that the process “has become less transparent and less accountable than it was” during the last Congress when Republicans were in control. Boehner also charged that Pelosi failed to respond to a previous letter calling on her to appoint a bipartisan working group tasked with analyzing House ethics rules and recommending clarifications.

By press time, Pelosi had not responded to the letter.

The one-paragraph Murtha certification letter, obtained by The Hill, outlines Murtha’s support for the center.

“The NDIC has become a vital member of the Intelligence Community, particularly in the area of narco-terrorism,” Murtha wrote. “The NDIC also anticipates undertaking a new and vitally important mission in partnership with the National Counter Terrorism Center, including: assuming responsibility for the terror no-fly list, the terror incident tracking program and serving as a post-disaster recovery site for NCTC operations.”

Murtha ended the letter by certifying that neither he nor his spouse has any financial interest in the project.

Democratic Budget Director Caryn Wagner sent a notice about the March 23 deadline for earmark certification letters to all committee members, according to a congressional aide.

A copy of the notice also mentions the March 23 deadline and states that “the appropriate program monitors” will investigate and evaluate proposed earmarks to make recommendations for staff directors. The staff directors are then to approve or modify the recommendations and give them to the panel’s chairman and ranking member. Finally, the notice states that the chairman or ranking member will then inform the member who asked for the earmark about the panel’s ruling on the request.