Senate tells Justice to look at suspicious earmark

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer
Thu Apr 17, 5:36 PM ET

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.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080417/ap_ ... ay_project

This is a huge stink down here in S.W. Florida ... America, your money is being thrown around to special interests and you foot the bill for corruption