Not Even Death Can Stop Congress’ Pork King

In death as in life, no one can stop the late Congressman Jack Murtha from spending your tax money on projects in his Pennsylvania district in the name of national security.

The former defense-appropriations chief in the House — who famously remarked, “If I’m a little corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district” — passed on in February. His successor, Rep. Mark Critz, gave Murtha an appropriate eulogy earlier this summer, slipping a $10 million earmark into the House version of next year’s defense funding bill to fund construction of a John P. Murtha Center for Public Service at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. If the earmark survives the snail’s-pace process of passing the bill during the current election season — and its prognosis is good — Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has pledged to match the cash with state money.

According to Critz’s explanation of the project, the 30,000 square-foot Center will primarily serve as a scholarly debating forum for policy issues and a repository for Murtha’s papers. But wait, you ask. How does the Murtha Center relate to the Department of Defense? Oh,  it’ll inspire “students and the general public to become active in our communities, the military, and in public service.” See? Military applicability.

The Murtha Center isn’t exactly the most rancid piece of defense pork in the congressional larder. For years, Congressman Charles Rangel used Darpa’s budget to funnel federal cash into the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

But Laura Peterson, a national-security budget analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, still isn’t having it. “We don’t see it as a military expenditure,” Peterson says. “The Department of Defense  has an ample budget for recruitment. We don’t need to be sponsoring a multimillion institution in Pennsylvania. Is it because Pennsylvanians need an extra push to join the military?”

Murtha is hardly the only deceased legislator to be posthumously honored with your money. Last year, Congress also added $10 million to the defense bill to build an Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate at the University of Massachusetts. The Kennedy Institute didn’t even pretend to have a military application, but that did absolutely nothing to derail the earmark.

And that’s why Peterson bets that the taxpayers will ultimately underwrite the Murtha Center. The Defense Subcommittee of House Appropriations marked up the bill, earmark included, on July 27. While a full House floor vote has yet to occur — and it’s unclear if the House and Senate will even pass the bill this year or punt it into 2011 via a parliamentary maneuver called a continuing resolution — some legislator would need to come forward to actually propose stripping the earmark out. Which, in the insular world of Congress, amounts to disrespecting a departed colleague.

“We’re not talking about a vaguely-named ultra-nano-space mortar-fire trainer kit or something,” Peterson observes. “There’s a name on [the earmark] of someone who just died and was very powerful and people don’t want to take that on.”

In April, the Navy christened a transport ship the U.S.S. John P. Murtha to honor the first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress. It’s unlikely to be the last thing the government names after the late free-spending legislator.

Credit: USMC

See Also:

• Gates to Murtha: Kill the Obamacopter, or the Defense Bill Gets It …
• Murtha: “Oink,” 150 Million Times
• Wall Street Bailout = Pentagon Cuts? (Updated)
• Rangel Steers Darpa Millions to Natural History Museum