GOP complains as Mollohan earmarks stripped from bill

The House Rules Committee stripped three of Rep. Alan Mollohan’s (D-W.Va.) earmarks from the Agriculture appropriations bill Wednesday night at the lawmaker’s request.

Committee Democrats acted in “accordance of his wishes and others’ wishes,” said John Santore, spokesman for the Rules panel.

{mosads}In a self-executing rule that cannot be changed on the House floor, the panel added a “limitation to effectively eliminate three West Virginia earmarks from the committee report accompanying the bill,” the committee’s website noted.

Mollohan is reportedly under FBI investigation for his ties to nonprofit groups, the earmarks he has directed to them and real estate partnerships with at least one of their officers.

In recent weeks, Republicans and watchdog groups have criticized Mollohan for continuing to seek earmarks for some of the nonprofits in the FBI probe, including the Canaan Valley Institute (CVI) of Thomas, W.Va.

Mollohan anticipated a Republican move to strike the earmarks on the floor, as the party did with other earmarks for the Canaan Valley Institute and other West Virginia nonprofits last week, so he offered an amendment to the agriculture-spending bill that would have prevented any money in the bill from being directed to the institute, according to a Democratic aide.

Instead of forcing Mollohan to offer and debate the amendment on the floor, the Rules Committee simply struck the earmarks from the bill.

Republicans immediately questioned the move. Jo Maney, spokeswoman for panel Republicans, said it was a “completely unprecedented” use of the committee to avoid an embarrassing public capitulation.

In floor speeches, several Republicans, led by Rep. Pete Sessions (Texas), lambasted the late-night maneuver.

“This highly irregular inclusion of a self-executing rule is particularly troubling because the Canaan Valley Institute is under investigation by the FBI,” Sessions said.

Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) responded by arguing that he had warned Republicans this year that there was not time to vet all earmarks and so had proposed waiting to disclose them until August, when there would be time. The statement appeared to be an admission that Mollohan’s earmarks might not have survived thorough scrutiny.

Obey explained that because Mollohan’s earmarks were controversial, House Democratic leaders decided to delete them.
“We had determined that because they were in controversy, for the good of the House, they should be not be considered at this time,” he said.

Mollohan’s office responded to the uproar with a statement saying he was the target of an “unsubstantiated, partisan attack — an attack that was apparent in some of the remarks made on the House floor this afternoon.”

The Canaan Valley Institute was also a victim of the attack, he said, describing it as a “unique and important resource in addressing some of the [biggest] ecological challenges facing the mid-Atlantic Highlands — watersheds polluted by acid mine drainage, runoff from clear-cut forests and poor wastewater treatment facilities.”

“To suggest that there is something sinister in all of that good work and my support for it makes a mockery of the critics’ claim that they speak for the common good,” he said.

Because of bad publicity surrounding the FBI investigation, Mollohan said that after speaking with CVI’s director, he decided to remove the funding projects from the agriculture appropriations bill.

“I fully anticipate supporting CVI’s efforts at a future time when these concerns no longer exist,” he said.

In March, Mollohan originally requested a total of approximately $1.5 million in three earmarks for the Canaan Valley Institute. One was for the Aquaculture Initiatives for the Midland Highlands in Leetown, W.Va., according to Mollohan’s certification letter.

Mollohan secured another for the Natural Stream Restoration in the Mid-Atlantic Highlights project, which would “continue to assess, design, and construct natural stream restoration initiatives.” A third would fund a “Wetlands Plants Initiative” in the Midland Highlands project.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), an anti-earmark crusader, said Democrats had reneged on a deal they agreed to last month to allow earmarks to be challenged on the floor.

“We have former members in jail because of earmarks we’ve approved in this body,” he said. “We simply can’t go on like this.”

Flake planned to offer an amendment to strip another Mollohan earmark, but the Defense subcommittee told his staff that it will be removing it as well as an earmark for Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) for the USS Intrepid Museum in New York City before the bill is debated on the floor, according to a GOP source with knowledge of the matter.

Jackie Kucinich contributed to this report.