{"id":294166,"date":"2010-02-08T16:42:29","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T21:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=76090"},"modified":"2010-02-08T16:42:29","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T21:42:29","slug":"the-death-of-an-appropriations-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/294166","title":{"rendered":"The Death of an Appropriations Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the death of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) Monday — just three days after he’d become<\/a> the\u00a0longest-serving congressman in Pennsylvania’s history — Capitol Hill has lost one of its most influential lawmakers, and perhaps the most proficient earmarker of them all. Not only was the 36-year Washington veteran a close confidant of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), but as chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, Murtha built a career on directing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal projects back to his downtrodden district.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the process, he made few friends among critics of pork-barrel spending — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington deemed<\/a> him recently to be among the top 20 most corrupt lawmakers on the Hill — but Murtha was unabashed. Indeed, he once called<\/a> the Democrats’ push for ethics reform “total crap,” and he\u00a0used to brag<\/a> that his middle initial stood for “power.” But of course, for the residents of blue-collar Johnstown — Murtha’s hometown and a former steel mecca-turned-shell of itself — he was a godsend whose reputation no scandal or ethics lapse could tarnish.<\/p>\n

A decorated veteran of Vietnam, Murtha’s voice carried a great deal of weight on issues related to Iraq and Afghanistan, most notably his undiluted 2005 endorsement of pulling troops out of Iraq.<\/p>\n

“The war in Iraq is not going as advertised,” he said<\/a> in November 2005. “It’s a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress.”<\/p>\n

As The Hill’s Roxana Tiron points out<\/a> today, “Murtha also questioned the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and would have been a pivotal voice in the congressional debate over the issue this spring.”<\/p>\n

More immediately, Murtha’s death opens up the chairmanship of the defense funding panel, leaving Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.) — the third-ranking Democrat on the larger Appropriations Committee — next in line for the coveted spot. Indeed, although the decision is ultimately in the hands of Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), Dicks’ office is already predicting that the 17-term Washingtonian will snag the seat.<\/p>\n

“He likely will succeed Murtha,” George Behan, chief of staff for Dicks, told<\/a> the Seattle Times today.<\/p>\n

And that’s good news for Seattle-based Boeing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the death of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) Monday — just three days after he’d become the\u00a0longest-serving congressman in Pennsylvania’s history — Capitol Hill has lost one of its most influential lawmakers, and perhaps the most proficient earmarker of them all. Not only was the 36-year Washington veteran a close confidant of House Speaker […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}