Pelosi names final members to debt supercommittee
Pelosi’s selections complete key debt panel (By Robert Pear and Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times)
"AP analysis: Special interests gave $3 million to members of new budget supercommittee" by Associated Press
The newly appointed members — six Democrats and six Republicans — have received more than $3 million total during the past five years in donations from political committees with ties to defense contractors, health care providers and labor unions. That money went to their re-election campaigns, according to AP’s review.
Supporters say the lawmakers were picked for their integrity and experience with complicated budget matters. But their appointments already have prompted early concerns from campaign-finance watchdog groups, which urged the lawmakers to stop fundraising and resign from leadership positions in political groups.
Public Campaign said establishing the committee "will make it cheaper for Wall Street, tax-dodging corporations and special-interest lobbyists to influence the spending cuts and revenue debate in Washington as the focus shifts to just 12 members of Congress.
The lawmakers received more than $1 million overall in contributions from the health care industry and at least $700,000 from defense companies, the AP found. Those two industries, especially, are sensitive to the outcome of the committee's negotiations because the automatic spending cuts could affect them most directly.
The extent of potential conflicts could be even greater than the AP's analysis shows. The AP measured contributions from industry PACs to lawmakers' election committees. But it didn't capture amounts from independent expenditures, such as donations, from defense executives and their families or money given to leadership political committees.
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Why do I have to hunt the web to find what the Globe presents to me in print?
WASHINGTON - For the dozen lawmakers tasked with producing a deficit-cutting plan, the threatened “doomsday’’ defense cuts hit close to home.
The six Republicans and six Democrats represent states where the biggest military contractors - Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics Corp., Raytheon Co. and Boeing Co. - build missiles, aircraft, jet fighters, and tanks while employing tens of thousands of workers.
The potential for $500 billion more in defense cuts could force the Pentagon to cancel or scale back multibillion-dollar weapons programs. That could translate into significant layoffs in a fragile economy, generate millions less in tax revenues for local governments, and upend lucrative company contracts with foreign nations.
The cuts could hammer Everett, Wash., where some of the 30,000 Boeing employees are working on airborne refueling tankers for the Air Force, or Amarillo, Texas, where 1,100 Bell Helicopter Textron workers assemble the fuselage, wings, engines, and transmissions for the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
So LET'S KEEP the WARS GOING and START MORE, right?
I mean, WHAT OTHER REASON would there be to spend money?
Billions in defense cuts would be a blow to the hundreds working on upgrades to the Abrams tank for General Dynamics in Lima, Ohio, and to the employees of BAE Systems in Pennsylvania.
Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, one of the Democratic members of the deficit-reduction committee, represents a state that was fifth in the nation with $8.37 billion in defense contracts this year, behind Virginia, California, Texas, and Connecticut, according to data on the federal government’s website USAspending.gov.
For committee members, the threat of Pentagon cuts is an incentive to come up with $1.5 trillion in savings over a decade. Failure would have brutal implications for hundreds of thousands workers back home.
Not surprisingly, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has described the automatic cuts as the “doomsday mechanism.’’ He has warned that the prospect of nearly $1 trillion in reductions over a decade would seriously undermine the military’s ability to protect the United States....
How is occupying nations halfway across the globe for the geopolitical interests of empire and energy protecting us?
Yeah, NEVER YOU MIND ALL the LIES we have been ENDLESSLY TOLD!
In February, Democratic senator Patty Murray of Washington celebrated when the Air Force awarded one of the biggest defense contracts ever, a $35 billion deal to build nearly 200 air refueling tankers, to Boeing, a mainstay in her home state. Boeing was fourth on the list of donors to Murray from 2007-2012, with its political action committee, employees, and family members contributing $102,610.
I remember when Murray won election as a soccer-mom "insurgent" and all the hope that went with it.
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Also see: Pelosi Protested at Shea-Porter Promo
