This week BILL MOYERS JOURNAL and the PBS series EXPOSÉ: AMERICA'S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS offer a hard and fresh look at how earmarks really work. The broadcast profiles SEATTLE TIMES reporters on the trail of how members of Congress have awarded federal dollars for questionable purposes to companies in local Congressional districts—often to companies whose executives, employees or PACs have made campaign contributions to the legislators.
The segment also focuses on how earmarks for some products were added to the defense appropriations bill even in cases in which the military didn’t want them in the first place. Example: a $4.65 million patrol boat the Coast Guard hadn’t even asked for and decided it couldn’t use was eventually given away by the Coast Guard to a California Sheriff’s office. David Heath of the SEATTLE TIMES says: “They're selling a product to the military that they're not even using.”
Watch a preview of the show, find out more from EXPOSÉ online and also check out THE SEATTLE TIMES online database of earmarks, The Favor Factory.
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