Looking at the PMA Porkers: An examination of CQ’s List of Appropriators.

So, I crunched the numbers of the PMA defense budget earmarks (raw info found here), and came up with something interesting. Below are the top twenty current House members who have taken money from PMA and placed earmarks in that bill, sorted by cumulative donations. A “#” represents being on the Defense Appropriations Committee at the time, and Republicans are bolded:

Requesting Member Total Credited PMA campaign $ since 2001
Peter J. Visclosky# $23,800,000 $219,000
John P. Murtha# $34,105,000 $143,600
James P. Moran# $10,800,000 $125,250
Norm Dicks# $12,130,000 $91,600
Bill Pascrell Jr. $2,400,000 $73,200
Mike Doyle $1,600,000 $69,400
Loretta Sanchez $3,200,000 $60,118
Tim Holden $3,200,000 $57,275
Tim Ryan $1,000,000 $54,250
Michael E. Capuano $2,800,000 $54,000
Chet Edwards $6,040,000 $48,734
Silvestre Reyes $800,000 $42,300
Christopher Carney $5,900,000 $38,500
Paul E. Kanjorski $4,800,000 $37,150
Jerry Lewis $8,000,000 $34,649
Marcy Kaptur# $1,600,000 $34,500
Carolyn McCarthy $1,000,000 $31,500
Patrick J. Murphy $1,600,000 $29,250
Rodney Frelinghuysen# $7,300,000 $29,129
Ander Crenshaw $1,000,000 $27,300

So, basically, of the top twenty recipients of PMA’s largess that are still in the House, seventeen are Democrats (combined total of about 133 million in earmarks, 1.3 million in contributions). The first current Republican shows up at #16 (there was one Republican in the top ten, but he’s actually gone now, and thus beyond my ability to spank). Of the top thirty (about 185 million in earmarks, 1.5 million in contributions), twenty-two are Democrats. also note that six members of the committee (five Democrats) are in the top twenty, and ten are in the top thirty (six Democrats).

Don’t get me wrong: I’d prefer that the list was zero Republicans, period. But PMA knew which people to hand out the serious money to, and they overwhelmingly had Ds after their names. And, hey, it looks like they got good value, too? Wall Street would kill and eat pandas live on the Disney Channel to get that kind of ROI…

Moe Lane

PS: PMA is going out of business. Gee. I wonder why?

Crossposted to RedState.

18 thoughts on “Looking at the PMA Porkers: An examination of CQ’s List of Appropriators.”

  1. Moe

    Check out THIS and then THIS, then check JJohn Pugliese and Jon Walkers’ occupations and contributions. They track almost exactly with your spread sheet.

  2. Moe,

    The resource you used actually understates Rep. Tim Holden’s earmarks to PMA clients because it details only those to current clients for FY 2008 and overlooks those which continued in FY 2008 to former PMA clients.

    A Valley Technologies earmark for FY 2008 ($1.6 million) was only the latest of a series which began in FY2003 when Valley still retained PMA, and a year or two AFTER the Valley/PMA contributions to Holden began. Valley’s take currently exceeds $10 million over six years. Even though they stopped paying PMA during that period the family who own this tiny business continued to pay Holden. Holden’s earmarks to the two firms now total about $15 million over six years.

    What’s most interesting about the Fidelity and Valley earmarks is that both are spent outside Holden’s district, Fidelity is in Reading, PA (Gerlach) and Valley operations are in State College (formerly Peterson). USASpending.gov records clearly show that all Valley Tech spending was in State College. In the absence of a direct benefit to Holden’s district, the appearance of quid pro quo is pretty compelling.

    Holden’s PMA Group contributions are a bit understated, also. Perhaps a PMA name or two was missed. His total take from PMA, when combined with donations from owners/management of the two companies, exceeds $130,000 since 2001.

    He’s bought and paid for…

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