WP: Hastert Directs Millions to Birthplace

[kskiska]

Earmarked Money Skirts Procedures

Sunday, May 29, 2005; A01

When Scott B. Palmer received an honorary degree in 2002 from his alma mater, Aurora University in Illinois, he urged the graduating class to "give back to our university, to our community and to our country."

As chief of staff to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Palmer runs a congressional office that has been able to do just that for Aurora, the birthplace of his boss and the largest city in his boss's home district.

Hastert has earmarked $24 million in grants for Aurora-based nonprofit groups since becoming speaker in 1999, using an obscure section of the big federal spending bills passed each year.

Nine months after the cap-and-gown ceremony honoring Palmer, Aurora University got $9.8 million to construct a teacher training institute. Aurora's Rush-Copley Medical Center, where Palmer is an unpaid trustee, captured a total of $5.5 million in 2002 and 2003. About $3.4 million has gone to another Aurora hospital where another member of Hastert's staff had worked.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/28/AR2005052801183.html

[Ksec]

1. Grassley is also pork heavy

[deacon2]

2. It's going to take one massive creche

to hold the statue of the Baby Hastert. What a classic, pork-addled model of privileged corpulence he is. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

[madrchsod]

3. ya the rest of his district gets jack shit

i guess the people in the rest of his district who voted for this tub of fat are happy aurora gets millions and the rest of his district gets nothing...and to think the democrats deep sixed zamora so they could work with fat denny...ya i`m in his district

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

4. Disappointing...

... as I was hoping to find instructions to the planet Hutt, if only to see where Jabba came from.

[paineinthearse]

5. The article goes on to say,,,

Hastert's office is one of those that has taken full advantage of this opportunity, an analysis of recent spending legislation shows. He has used earmarks to get $3.2 million for a National Guard armory in Aurora and $7.5 million for a library at Judson College in Elgin. The funds for Judson College, which describes itself as an evangelical Christian school, were tucked into a section of the Department of Energy's appropriation for "biological and energy research." A Hastert news release explained that the library would be a "green" structure that would "cut down on fossil fuel costs and make the most of alternative natural resources."

Hastert has also made extensive use of earmarks in the "health care and other facilities" account, which in the last decade has seen runaway growth. The account appears as a special construction fund in the budget of the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The unit runs a variety of health programs for women and children, low-income families, HIV/AIDS patients and other vulnerable groups, but until the 1990s it had little involvement with construction projects. Today it administers the transfer of funds to projects designated annually by Congress.

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It is past time to change the laws that allow pork and abuse of power.