"Follow the money." It was my favorite line from All the President's Men. It was the ultimate tip made to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they investigated a little known break-in at the Watergate. The speaker was W. Mark Felt who for 33 years was known only as "deep throat". The advice is as good and as relevant today as it was back then.
With regard to earmarks, an issue that voters of both parties respond to, Sen. Hillary Clinton is the queen of the hidden dollar. The Clinton campaign has repeatedly refused to respond to requests that she identify her earmarks. She went so far as to vote against an amendment last year which would have required public disclosure of earmark requests.
Clinton now says she plans to release her requests for 2009 but when it comes to previous years, mums the word. Taxpayers for Common Sense estimates that Senator Clinton has received a little over two billion dollars in earmarks during the course of her Senate career.
Here are some of her earmarks, and other information about them, that are of particular interest.
Sen. Clinton got $18,600 in campaign contributions from Alan Gerry, a former cable television mogul and registered Republican, days after she made a million dollar earmark for his Woodstock Concert Museum. It was included in a Senate education spending bill. It's neither illegal nor unusual for contributors to benefit from congressionally directed spending. Far too often, in fact, it's business as usual. When the earmark made the news late last year the Senate finally passed an amendment to cut the funding.
In the 2008 Defense Authorization Bill, Mrs. Clinton has secured more earmarks than any other Democrat except for panel Chairman Sen. Carl Levin. Clinton's beneficiaries include defense giant Northrop Grumman, which secured $6 million for the AN/SPQ-9B radar; New York-based Telephonics, which won $5 million for a standardized aircraft wireless intercom system for the National Guard Black Hawk helicopter fleet; Plug Power Inc., another New York state company, which got $3 million for fuel cell power technology; and Alliant Tech Systems (ATK), which won $3.5 million for the X-51 B robust scramjet research.
The Seattle Times reported that in all, Clinton co-sponsored 66 earmarks totaling about $150 million. Clinton mostly handed out business to defense contractors with operations in New York. The Seattle Times counted more than 220 earmarks for Clinton in six other recent spending bills.
In turn, Clinton has taken approximately $60,000 from Defense lobbyists in the 2008 election cycle.
It was also recently made public that Clinton, over the past three years, has secured $8 million in earmarks for General Motors for hybrid, hydrogen and fuel-cell research including $3 million for GM in the fiscal 2008 Pentagon spending bill. One of GM's main lobbyists on the issue is Steve Ricchetti, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and one of Hillary Clinton's 'Hillraisers' who are committed to raising at least $100,000 for her presidential campaign. As a donor, he has given $4,600, the maximum allowed, to the campaign. It was reported in The Washington Post that Ricchetti's firm earned $120,000 in the first half of this year from lobbying for GM on issues that included the development and promotion of hydrogen fuel cells and hybrid vehicles.
With regard to years past, Mrs. Clinton's unwillingness to give even the most basic information about the special funding she has requested as a United States senator leaves wide open the question of what it is that she has to hide.
Is she hiding information about donors she requested earmarks for? What is the role that lobbyists and corporations have had in her office as she requested more than a billion dollars for their pet projects? Has Senator Clinton proposed any earmarks for corporations or projects that ex-president Bill Clinton has personally advocated for?
There are more questions than answers it seems when it comes to following the queen's riches.