Senate tells Justice to look at suspicious earmark
WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Thursday to direct the Justice Department to
probe how a Florida road project made its way into a 2005 highway spending
bill after the House and Senate voted on what lawmakers thought was the
final version of the bill.
If violations of federal criminal law occurred, it is the province of the
Justice Department and the FBI to investigate and prosecute them," said
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
The vote was 63-29 to urge the Justice Department to determine if criminal
laws were broken when the "Coconut Road Interchange" project was inserted
into a $286 billion highway spending bill in 2005 after the House and
Senate
had voted on it but before it was sent to President Bush for his
signature.
The investigation was proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairman
of
the Environment and Public Works Committee, as part of legislation to fix
errors and make other modifications to the 2005 act.
The Senate followed the vote by rejecting, on a 49-43 vote, a competing
proposal by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to create an eight-member bicameral
body to look into the Coconut Road issue and make recommendations to
congressional ethics committees or law enforcement officials. Sixty votes
were needed to approve the amendment. Opponents said that idea raised
constitutional issues of having one chamber investigate the other.
The highway bill passed 88-2. Boxer said it would release $1 billion into
the economy by fixing technicalities that have delayed some 500 highway
projects. The administration expressed concern that it was creating new
earmarks. The measure now goes to House-Senate negotiations, where the
House
would need to agree to the proposal to ask Justice to investigate the
Coconut Road matter.
Some Republicans said requiring the executive branch to intervene raised
separation of powers issues.
"I'm highly skeptical that the Congress can direct the executive (branch)
as
to what cases they ought to look into," said House Republican Whip Roy
Blunt
of Missouri.
The original bill included $10 million for improvements for I-75 in
southwest Florida, one of more than 6,000 earmarks in the bill. But the
version sent to the president redirected that money to the Coconut Road
Interchange in Lee County.
"Something happened in Congress that should never have happened," said
Coburn, an outspoken critic of the earmarks, or special projects, promoted
by lawmakers that get inserted in legislation.
While the details of how the change occurred remained murky, then-House
Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, has acknowledged
that
he backed the Coconut Road project at the request of community residents.
"I
think it's the right thing for the state of Florida, and you know, right
now, they're supportive of it," he said this week in an interview with The
Associated Press.
Young has not been charged with any wrongdoing, although he has been
linked
to a Florida developer who held a fundraiser for Young in 2005 and stood
to
benefit from the earmark.
"Mr. Young's office has welcomed any inquiry or examination of the
earmark,
and I would support that as well," said House Republican leader John
Boehner
of Ohio. "I think it's in everyone's interest that we know what happened
and
did not happen here."
The House highway corrections bill that passed a year ago returned the $10
million to the original I-75 project, but there has been no known request
for the House ethics committee to look into how the change took place.
"That's something the ethics committee should look at," House Speaker
Nancy
Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday at a news conference.
The Senate put off a vote on another controversial amendment, a proposal
by
presumed GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona to suspend
the
18.4 cent-a-gallon federal gas tax this summer to give drivers relief from
high gas prices.
Fellow Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, who co-sponsored the amendment, said it
was "the one thing Congress can do and do immediately" to help drivers.
But Kyl said they would not offer the amendment, avoiding a battle over
how
to make up for an estimated $9 billion in lost revenues. The gas tax is
the
main source of revenue for the Highway Trust Fund that provides grants for
highway and bridge construction and repair. McCain suggested taking money
from the Treasury's general fund, but Democrats said that would just
worsen
the deficit. Democrats in turn were mulling a plan to raise more taxes
from
oil corporations.
The bill is H.R. 1195.
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