 On Tuesday, I brought up a recent Politico article which described Rep. Mark Souder's lobbying obsession. It seems like he has been doing everything in his power to make some friends in the K Street establishment, presumably to reap the financial benefits that a relationship with these fellow Washington insiders can offer.
Today, we have even more bizarre news.
It seems that the indispensable Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call is reporting that Rep. Mark Souder was involved in a recent lobbying racket by which he was simply signing his name off on earmark requests conceived, written, and pushed by a lobbying firm with financial ties to Souder.
From Paul Singer's article: On July 12, 2007, Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) sent a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the House Education and Labor Committee asking that they insert language into the No Child Left Behind reauthorization bill to fund a project for at-risk youth.
He wrote that the project had been proposed by Grace College, a private evangelical college in his Congressional district, and the Ventura County (Calif.) Office of Education to match up the college's experience in educating prisoners with the county's expertise in reaching at-risk youth.
But the project linking two geographically distant entities was really the brainchild of Anchor Consulting, a small lobbying firm that represents both the VCOE and Grace College. The firm pitched the partnership to the clients, wrote the legislative language and drafted the letter for Souder's signature, according to people involved in the process and documents obtained by Roll Call. Even if we give Rep. Mark Souder the benefit of the doubt and say this is a worthwhile program, and even if we ignore the fact that a lobbying firm put a piece of paper requesting millions of taxpayer dollars on his desk which was signed without question, and even if we ignore the blatant abuse of his position within the House of Representatives, there is still one problem: Neither VCOE or Grace College knew anything about this request, because they didn't know anything about this program.At the time, the board had no staff dedicated to the project. Yet Anchor reported that the proposal already had been endorsed by Souder and that his status as a "swing vote" on the committee made it likely it would be approved.
At the board meeting - a recording of which is available here - Wilk outlined the firm's approach, which lobbying experts say is probably not unique, though it is rare that the public hears about it. Rather than the client coming to the lobbyist for help in obtaining funding for a project, the lobbyist creates ways to deliver federal money for the client, even for projects the client had no plan to pursue.
Instead of trying to get funding to fix weaknesses, Wilk told the board, "a lot of times what we do is we want to take your strengths, because we can sell that, get you money - and as you know all funds are fungible - and then maybe take some of that money out and go and put it to your other needs." Rep. Mark Souder has a lot of hobbies, apparently. He is obsessed with fantasy sports, for example. He often finds himself sitting around, conjuring up wild, offensive and completely baseless claims regarding major world religions, to point out another. And don't even get me started on the Drug War...
But now we can add something else to that list: Wasting taxpayer dollars and mindlessly shilling for his best friends in the lobbying industry.
The 3rd District deserves better than this. |
