Senator-Designate Tim Scott (R-SC)

In May 2011, just months after Scott was sworn in as a U.S. Representative and the new Republican House majority opted to ban earmarks, Scott joined four other South Carolina Congressmen in writing to Secretary of Energy Chu on behalf of a South Carolina manufacturer.

They wrote:

The purpose of this letter is to express our support for Robert Bosch LLC (Bosch) and the company’s recent response to DOE Funding Opportunity Number FOA000023900219 (Recirculated Exahust Gas Intake Sensor – REGIS). In addition, we are aware that Bosch’s partner in this application is Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research (ICAR). Bosch has been a committed and active member of the South Carolina manufacturing community since 1974.

View the letter below:

The Department of Energy approved the application as requested, giving Bosch a $550,000 federal project.

But publicly, Scott backed a ban on earmarks, arguing that they were corrupt and wasteful. “Washington is filled with politicians who promise that they will deliver goodies to the folks back home. What those politicians don’t tell us is that by playing that game, they force the taxpayers of our district to pay for hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful pork projects all over the country,” he observed in his 2010 campaign. He told his future constituents, “The earmark system leaves us with crumbs while others get the loaves.”

According to Taegan Goddard’s Political Dictionary, “lettermarking” occurs when lawmakers send letters to federal agencies requesting money for projects in their home district. While agencies are not obligated to comply with the requests, Reason’s Jacob Sullum notes, “agencies are loath to antagonize the legislators who approve their budgets, especially when they have added extra money with a specific project in mind.” These letters are only available to the public if someone happens to request them under the Freedom of Information Act.

Even while touting himself as a “Tea Party kind of guy before there was a Tea Party,” presidential candidate and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) isn’t fooling many among grassroots conservatives, who label him as “the poster boy for big government.” And Santorum’s past as a “prolific supporter of earmarks” won’t make it any easier.

While serving as a U.S. senator in 2003, Santorum procured over $3.1 million in federal earmarks for social conservative causes — over $1 million of which has gone to the anti-gay Urban Family Council. The Christian group and its president William Devlin have actively opposed gay rights, from promoting a same-sex marriage ban to supporting laws criminalizing homosexuality.

Devlin even criticized the enactment of a stronger hate-speech ban in Philadelphia in 2005:

“There is a collective spirit of fear hanging over this city. Right now, the gays own Philadelphia…Over the last ten years, I’ve been to pastor after pastor in this city, trying to get them to put pressure on the elected officials who’ve been pushing the homosexual agenda. They’re all afraid to speak up. They’re like the frog in the kettle: they’ve sat there in silence for all this time while the gays kept turning up the water temperature. Now it’s come to a boil, and they’re still in the pot.”

In turn, the UFC and its president William Devlin campaigned for Santorum during his 2006 campaign, potentially violating the IRS rules regarding acceptable political activity for religious organizations. Along with the three other Christian groups in the Pennsylvania Pastors Network, the UFC hosted a get-out-the-vote drive in local churches at which Santorum was the only candidate represented; he gave a seven-minute speech to pastors on the importance of the same-sex marriage initiative via a pre-recorded video.

Santorum’s close relationship with social conservative groups like UFC, including the securing of federal dollars for their causes, has led right-wing writers to characterize Santorum as more inclined “to make government pro-family, not to make it small.” As RedState’s Ben Domenech concludes, “It’s precisely the Republican Party of Rick Santorum that even makes the Tea Party movement necessary.”

–Sarah Bufkin

Michele Bachmann (R-MN) officially kicked off her presidential campaign this morning in Iowa, right after the latest state poll shows her surging and only a point behind front-runner Mitt Romney (R-MA). But as she becomes a more prominent and viable candidate, Bachmann is facing fresh scrutiny over her past remarks and positions. The Los Angeles Times recently released an investigative report showing that she and her family personally benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in government aid.

Bachmann, who once declared, “All this pork is bad” and has centered her campaign around denouncing out-of-control government spending, was less than truthful when disclosing the full extent of the earmarks she’s taken during an interview on Sunday with Fox News’ Chris Wallace.

Wallace confronted her with the government funds she’s accepted over the years while portraying herself as a fiscal conservative. They include $30,000 for a counseling clinic run by her husband and $260,000 in federal subsidies for a family farm in Wisconsin, where she is listed as a partner. Bachmann, a Tea Party favorite, struggled to square her pledge not to take congressional pork with accepting earmarks for personal projects.

WALLACE: Over the years you sought more than $60 million in state earmarks and more than $3.7 million in federal earmarks. Question: that’s a fiscal hawk?

BACHMANN: Well let’s go through them. First of all the money that went to the clinic was actually training money for employees. The clinic did not get the money and my husband and I did not get the money…Number two regarding the farm, the farm is my father-in-law’s farm, it’s not my husband and my farm. My husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm. Regarding the earmarks, I believe the right place to build projects is in the state. And the states have to build roads and bridges, and I don’t apologize for building roads and bridges.

WALLACE: So you’re pro-earmark?

BACHMANN: No, during my first term in Congress I signed a pledge that I will not take earmarks. I’ve been faithful to that pledge.

Watch it:

Bachmann’s claim that she has been faithful to the no-earmark pledge simply does not square with the facts. And as Wallace pointed out, Bachmann’s counseling clinic benefited from federal money even if it was “just” for employee training, as she claimed. Her defense that “it actually took away from the clinic because these were training hours where employees were not able to bring more income” doesn’t pass the laugh test, as Bachmann or her partner would have had to apply for and accept federal funds to receive money for employee training. She also failed to explain how “additional training to help employees” was not a benefit to the clinic (or why she applied for it if that was the case).

She also dismissed the charge that she was “pro-earmark” based on the fact that some of the pork she took was for infrastructure projects. Her defense that pork isn’t pork if it’s for projects she likes sounds a lot like the political truism: “It’s only pork if your opponent takes it.”

All in all, Bachmann’s explanation was completely inadequate, fudged the truth, and failed to justify how she took taxpayer money for pet projects while denouncing reckless Washington spending. As she kicks off a three-state campaign tour, hopefully the media will continue to press her until she gives a more honest accounting of the earmarks she accepted.

On Wednesday, we reported that some of the earmarks Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) had requested over the years appear have the potential to benefit Issa’s real estate empire. Yesterday, Issa responded to our article over Twitter:

Issa did not dispute the fact that his earmark could benefit his real estate property. Instead, he argued that the earmark was simply a request from a constituent. In his Tweet, Issa linked to a letter from a county government group requesting the earmarks at issue. It would be appropriate if the earmark had been requested coincidentally near property Issa already owned. Over the years, starting with fiscal year 2007, Issa had placed the West Vista Way earmark on his list of interested earmarks. However, the timeline of events shows that Issa actually purchased his $16.6 million office building with the knowledge that his own earmark next to it was finally pending:

– February 20, 2008: According to the letter provided by Issa’s office, the San Diego Association of Governments requested $2 million in taxpayer earmarks for widening and improving the West Vista Way road in Vista, California.

– March 4, 2008: Issa releases the list of over $200 million in earmark requests that includes the $2 million request for the improvements on West Vista Way.

– October 8, 2008: Issa negotiates the purchase of the Vista Medical Plaza for $16.6 million. The building is situated next to West Vista Way and along the area where the earmarked improvements are targeted.

– February 2009: A few months after closing the deal on his multi-million dollar Vista Medical Plaza office building, Issa pushes for his West Vista Way earmark in the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009. Unlike any of Issa’s other earmarks, Issa secured two separate earmarks for West Vista Way into the bill: one for $245,000 and another for $570,000.

– February 2009: Although Issa publicly listed over $200 million in earmarks for the FY2009 budget, he only secured a few. He did not obtain a million dollar Boys and Girl grant, nor did he secure one for a flood control grant in his district. Out of all of the earmarks he publicly listed, the West Vista Way one seemed to fair better than most.

– March 11, 2009: President Obama signs the Omnibus into law, granting a total of $815,000 to the West Vista Way project for Issa. Issa later begins advertising his Vista Medical Plaza and its “Excellent Access with Freeway Visibility.”

As we noted yesterday, Issa has said that an “earmark is tantamount to a bribe.” Issa’s fellow House Republicans in the San Diego area have a long history of earmark related scandals. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) got caught enriching himself off of land deals boosted by the earmarking process. Former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) was embroiled in a similar controversy. Responding to the Cunningham scandal, Issa made a poignant observation:

“The Duke Cunningham earmark-bribery scandal brought new scrutiny to members of Congress and, specifically, to the appropriations process. Constituents want to know that the project requests we make benefit our communities, our country, and don’t line our pockets.”

Planning his role as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Issa called for hearings on the earmarking process. Given Issa’s remarks on the Cunningham scandal, he should be acutely aware of the ethical problems posed by buying property next to his own earmark projects.

Why did Issa purchase the land when he had a pending earmark request that could increase its value? Will he now withdraw his earmark since he might benefit financially from the project?

As Roll Call reported earlier this month, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has a history of blending his personal business interests with his work as a member of Congress. Companies owned by the Issa family, including a firm called DEI (an acronym for Issa’s initials), set up websites to channel users to Issa’s official congressional campaign website. After Roll Call made an ethical inquiry to Issa, he changed the website.

ThinkProgress has discovered more troubling evidence that Issa may have blended his work as a lawmaker with his own business empire. After founding a successful car alarm company, Issa invested his fortune in a sprawling network of real estate companies with holdings throughout his district. One of Issa’s most valuable properties, a medical office building at 2067 West Vista Way in Vista, California, is called the Vista Medical Center, and was purchased in 2008 for $16.6 million. Described as “a long-term investment,” the property was bought by a company called Viper LLC, a business entity operated by Issa’s family that Issa has up to a $25 million dollar stake in.

Around the same time Issa made the Vista Medical Center purchase, the congressman began requesting millions of dollars worth of earmarks to widen and improve the highway adjacent to the building. In 2008, he requested $2 million to expand West Vista Way, the road in front of his “long-term investment,” but only received $245,000 from the government. The next year, Issa made another earmark request for improving the West Vista Way highway next to his building. He earmarked another $570,000, bringing his total to $815,000, to add parking lots, widen the road, add bus stops, improve the sewer system, and other utility work. A map showing the location of Issa’s property, and the road, is below:

Issa has said that an “earmark is tantamount to a bribe.” While Issa has handed out earmarks to his campaign donors in the past, in this case, he appears to be helping himself.

Although the highway project has not begun yet (because of local budget problems), the federal money is allocated through Issa’s efforts. Already, a firm representing Issa’s real estate company is advertising the Vista Medical Building and its “Excellent Access with Freeway Visibility.” As ethics experts have explained, lawmakers should avoid earmarks in the immediate area of their own business interests.

Issa’s highway earmarks not only potentially benefit his multi-million dollar medical office building, they provide better access to his other properties in the area. About 2 miles down West Vista Way from the Vista Medical Center, Issa owns a commercial office building worth over $9 million, as well as an adjacent retail office building. The commercial office building leases to a number of different clients, and Issa’s retail building leases to a Hooter’s. All three properties are on the same highway, which Issa plans to retrofit with taxpayer money.

Even though Senate Republicans banned earmarks in November, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) promised yesterday afternoon that he will find a way to circumvent that ban in order get his pet project funded, even if it means voting against the short-term continuing resolution Congress is now considering to fund the government:

Graham said there are plans to put language in the continuing budget resolution for the current year authorizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to spend some of its own money so the study is not delayed further.

It will not mention Charleston specifically or include a dollar amount but Graham says corps officials told him they could put in between $50,000 and $100,000.

“The state is ready to write the check for the rest tomorrow. We just need to get the corps authorization to spend the money,” he said, adding he will oppose any continuing budget without the provision.

“Is that an earmark?” Graham rhetorically asked reporters. “I don’t know what you call it. To me it makes sense.” Graham’s more conservative South Carolina colleague, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), supports the project, but not Graham’s funding method. He’s proposing an independent commission that would assess the merits of Army Corps projects, instead of allowing lawmakers to direct projects through earmarks.

While the port deepening may be a worthy project, Graham’s promise to fund it by any means necessary conflicts with the GOP’s stance on earmarks — and his own comments. A few months ago, Graham called earmarks “abuses” of power that lead “many to question our willingness to get our nation’s fiscal house in order.” And just last month, Graham said, “Taking a time out on earmarking, I think, would be good to just show the American people that we’re not totally living on different planet from you.” Watch it: