◼ ‘Buying’ House Votes for Unpopular Legislation - Heritage.org
At least 32 vulnerable House Democrats received significant federal grant money in the periods leading up to or directly after their votes on at least one of these three pieces of legislation (see charts below), raising concerns that those grants may have been used either to encourage or reward votes in favor of the administration’s position.
...while administrative earmarking is a practice used by nearly every administration, CRS found in a report published in April 2010 — immediately after the time period at issue — that “[b]oth the number and value of earmarks requested solely by the President increased since FY2008.” The number of earmarks had increased by 54 percent, CRS found, while the value of those requests had increased by a whopping 126 percent.
The timing of those requests also suggests political factors at play. Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky, a former Federal Elections Commissioner, said the administration’s actions “show how taxpayer funds are used for crass political purposes — it is a rank abuse of the government’s power and another sign of this administration’s lack of a moral compass.”
