Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who is vying for the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, has helped dole out more than $1.8 billion in transportation projects to 19 members of the House Steering Committee.<\/p>\n
The 28 members of the Steering Committee, which includes Young, are expected to vote next month on who will be the next chairman of the homeland-security panel. Former Chairman Chris Cox (R-Calif.) resigned from the House this summer to become chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n
Young is competing for the gavel against Reps. Peter King (R-N.Y.), Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and John Linder (R-Ga.). Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif) is also said to be interested in the post.<\/p>\n
Young’s chief of staff and legislative director declined to comment for this article.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course he did. Young’s abuse here is so obvious, there’s hardly any point to denying it or spinning it away. A lawmaker who helped control transportation pork has tried to buy the support of other members so they’ll support his bid to be chairman of a different committee. And Hastert, controls five of the steering committee’s 33 votes, got a half-billion from Young in pork in the same bill.<\/p>\n
This wasn’t a coincidence.
\n<\/p>\n
Keith Ashdown, vice president of [Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks government spending], said Young appears to have bolstered his bid for the Homeland Security gavel.<\/p>\n
“He keeps his bosses happy but he also starts to grease the wheels for him to take over the leadership of the homeland security committee,” said Ashdown. “On average the Republican members of the steering committee are getting exponentially more than the average lawmaker…. That group of lawmakers are the biggest winners in the bill.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This may sound impolite, but this sounds an awful lot like legalized bribery. Young gave our money to curry favor with other lawmakers to get a job he wants. If it’s not bribery, what is it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shortly after the last election, the competition among would-be committee chairmen (and women) grew intense on Capitol Hill. Apparently, the number one factor had nothing to do with merit and everything to do with cash. Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), for example, wanted desperately to be House Appropriations Committee chairman, so he contacted Speaker Dennis Hastert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}