Questions Linger about Chabot's Pork Projects

Many questions still linger about the $1.6 million earmark Mr. Chabot inserted into the Fiscal 2007 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill. Chabot has been a longtime public critic of pork-barrel projects but seems to have done an unexplainable "about face" while arranging for this taxpayer money to be used for a number of local projects which would benefit the companies of eleven men and women who serve as part of his inner circle. The staggering amount of the monies set aside perplexed even Republican legislators such as Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) who has the following excerpt on the Government page for the Senate subcommittee on Federal Financial Management:

Eleven men and women who were identified as hosts or co-hosts on an invitation to a March Chabot fundraiser featuring House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) serve in leadership roles with the organizations in Chabot’s district that would receive federal money. It is not clear what relationship, if any, exists between the campaign donations and the federal money lined up for the pet causes of the donors. Indeed, it can be difficult for the public to understand why federal dollars are apportioned the way they are. “The suspicion has been that the way money works in politics is that those who give get, and this example appears to confirm that,” said Ellen S. Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation.

Link to the entire story here:http://coburn.senate.gov/ffm/index.cfm?FuseAction=LatestNews.NewsStories&ContentRecord_id=1f36d469-802a-23ad-4ac6-5bdd0bdd1413&Issue_id=&IsTextOnly=False

Chabot's change of heart seems to go hand in hand with his major policy flip-flops in recent years. When running for his first term in 1994, Chabot campaigned speaking out against huge tax breaks for major corporations or what he billed "Corporate Welfare". However, the Cheney Energy Bill of 2005 contained over $23 Billion in tax breaks and incentives for Major Oil companies already raking in record profits. Mr. Chabot gave his full support to the piece of legislation. Again in 2006, he lobbied hard against an increase in the Federal Minumum Wage saying it would destroy the economy, even though it had not been raised in over 9 years. However, when a provision was inserted into the bill which would essentially give many of his wealthy donors another tax break, he changed his mind and said now that an increase would be GOOD for the economy.

Mr. Chabot still has alot of questions to answer about these donors who seem to be able to write their own blank checks on behalf of Congressman Chabot and the taxpayers.