The Swine Line

Jeff Birnbaum of the Washington Post has gotten to the bottom of the mysterious 6-page pro-earmark memorandum that was the subject of his column on April 29, 2008.  

The author was none other than a lobbyist for a big earmark-seeking firm here in town, W. Roger Gwinn from The Ferguson Group.  Jeff writes:

The six-page document, which has been creating controversy on Capitol Hill, was authored by — drum roll, please — the Ferguson Group, which says it’s the largest lobbyist for localities in Washington.

In other words — shock of shocks — the most active (and secretive) promoter of earmarks turns out to be a firm that specializes in obtaining them for cities, counties and public agencies.

Soon after my column on the paper ran last week, the company’s president, W. Roger Gwinn, phoned to admit that his firm’s seven-person budget and appropriations policy team wrote it — initially to explain to clients why they tended to get more money from congressional earmarks than from federal agencies left to their own devices. It was later distributed to lobbyists and congressional staffers.

I guess “Jessica,” whose name was imprinted in the document as the author, was the Hill staffer who had the job of cutting and pasting Mr. Gwynn’s document and peddling it as a staff-generated research paper.  The charade is over, I guess, but it is an instructive view into the underworld of earmarking. 

Keep in mind that states, municipalitiies, cities and localities are now perhaps the biggest supplicants for federal earmarks.  Why press the locals to pay for some dumb brainchild of a local politician when you can hire up some lobbyists to get the federal government to shell out the taxpayers’ money for your project.  This has become a tsunami of spending for wasteful local projects to the federal government.

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