The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

ABC News: Paula Broadwell's Gun Commercial Raises Ethical Concerns

Watch More News Videos at ABC | 2012 Presidential Election | Entertainment & Celebrity News

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

Paula Broadwell, General David Petraeus' mistress, may have used her ties to Petraeus to promote a new lightweight machine gun for a defense contractor.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight, said political influence should have no place in federal contracting.

"It's an uneven playing field. That is not how a contract should be decided," Brian said.

Watch the video above to see the ABC News story. Read the report at ABC News.

Andre Francisco is an online producer for the Project On Government Oversight.

Follow @andrefrancisco

Lockheed Campaign Cash Has Flowed to Members of House Panel Probing F-22 Problems

By JACOB WASHKURAK, JOHN PARKER and BEN FREEMAN

When members of a House subcommittee convene today for a hearing on the troubled F-22 stealth fighter, they’ll have more in common than just an interest in the mysterious symptoms that caused some pilots to declare the plane unsafe to fly earlier this year.

All but one of the 25 subcommittee members have received contributions in the current election cycle from individuals or political action committees associated with Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor on the F-22, according to a Project On Government Oversight (POGO) analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The one exception, Pennsylvania Republican Todd R. Platts, is retiring from Congress. In a 2010 op-ed piece, he said that as always his campaign was being funded solely by contributions from individual citizens and that he refused to accept contributions from special-interest groups. There are no records of his ever having accepted any funds from employees of Lockheed Martin during his congressional career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The other subcommittee members received between $1,000 and $10,000 each, for a total of $153,250, according to the POGO analysis (see table below).

Federal Bank Examiner Violated Ethics Rules by Playing Golf with Bank Employees, Probe Finds

By MICHAEL SMALLBERG

A federal bank examiner violated ethics rules by golfing with bank employees during work hours and letting them pick up expenses, according to a report by a government watchdog recently released under the Freedom of Information Act.

A series of banking scandals and crises has called into question whether bank regulators are independent enough from the banks they oversee. The report by the U.S. Treasury Department’s inspector general offers a glimpse of one such relationship.

The report accuses one national bank examiner of “playing golf during official duty hours,” “accepting gratuities” in the form of “golf fees and/or food,” and “recording his official time and attendance hours as working while playing golf” with employees of a bank whose name begins “First National Bank of.”

The rest of the bank’s name is blacked out, along with the names of the examiner and bank employees.

The inspector general released the July 2010 report last month to the web site governmentattic.org, which posts records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The Project On Government Oversight found the report in a batch of documents on the site.

Despite New Law, Members of Congress Still Profiting on Stock Deals

Who is the Money Working For?

By DANA LIEBELSON

As I said in a previous post about Thomas MacKenzie,

Sure, the fat severance bonus Northrop Grumman paid lobbyist Thomas MacKenzie right before he left to work for the House Armed Services Committee may have been a reward for a job well done. However, that doesn’t keep the cynics among us from wondering if the company was hoping the cash might also help MacKenzie remember his old friends fondly.

Read more about MacKenzie in my lastest post. For more examples of the revolving door, check out our Un-Do Influence Campaign.

Dana Liebelson is POGO's Beth Daley Impact Fellow

Follow @dliebelson

Lobbyist Turned Hill Staffer Owned At Least $100,000 in Northrop Stock

By DANA LIEBELSON

Thomas MacKenzie, the former Northrop Grumman lobbyist who was awarded a large severance and bonus prior to taking a job on Capitol Hill in 2011, also owned between $100,000 and $250,000 in Northrop stock during that time, according to his ethics disclosure statement.

“It’s not uncommon for a senior K Street lobbyist to have a quarter of a million dollars tucked away in stock. But it is uncommon for someone who is a congressional staffer,” Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, told POGO. “This poses a very serious conflict of interest.”

Infographic: Who is the Money Working For?

The disclosure statement, which was filed in August 2011, covers the period between Jan. 1, 2010 and June 15, 2011. MacKenzie joined the House Armed Services Committee in March 2011, and earned about $108,000 in that year.

This is MacKenzie’s second trip through the revolving door. Before working for Northrop Grumman, he was a staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee from 2000 to 2005, according to Legistorm.

It’s unknown whether MacKenzie still owns Northrop stock, as this information isn’t readily available to the public. However, under the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act which passed earlier this year, senior staffers must file reports on personal transactions valued over $1,000 within 45 days (with some exceptions)—beginning July 3.

The STOCK Act applies to congressional staffers who make a monthly salary of at least $9,962 for any two months during a calendar year. According to Legistorm, MacKenzie’s salary seems to qualify for the first quarter of 2012. So once the STOCK Act kicks in, it appears he should be subject to this disclosure requirement.

Defense Lobbyist Got Fat Bonus Before Joining Congressional Staff

Northrop Grumman's E-2D Hawkeyes are among the billions in weapons the U.S. government buys from the company each year (DoD photo)

Click here to join POGO's Un-Do Influence Campaign: a movement to reclaim Washington

By DANA LIEBELSON

Sure, the fat severance bonus Northrop Grumman paid lobbyist Thomas MacKenzie right before he left to work for the House Armed Services Committee may have been a reward for a job well done. However, that doesn’t keep the cynics among us from wondering if the company was hoping the cash might also help MacKenzie remember his old friends fondly.

Lee Fang at Republic Report found this week through a recently filed ethics disclosure form that in 2011, Northrop  awarded MacKenzie a $498,334 bonus, worth almost as much as his $529,379 annual salary. MacKenzie got the money right before he left to go work as a congressional staffer under Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.).

At his new job, where he’ll be working on many issues that could affect his former employer, MacKenzie will earn about $120,000 per year.  

“The sheer size of the bonus appears extraordinary,” Sheila Krumholz, executive director for the Center for Responsive Politics, told POGO. “A reasonable person might wonder if the bonus was paid to compensate the pay cut, with the expectation that he will work for Northrop Grumman on the inside.”

Nuclear Weapons Lobby Pumps Cash Into Congressional Races

A decomissioned Titan II nuclear missile, which is now part of a museum (photo by Flickr user Kingdafy).

Click here to join POGO's Un-Do Influence Campaign: a movement to reclaim Washington

By MIA STEINLE

The members of Congress with the most influence over nuclear weapons have received $2.9 million in campaign contributions this election cycle from defense contractors involved in the nuclear weapons lobby, according to a new report from the Center for International Policy. The contractors have given these members $18.7 million over the course of their tenures in Congress.

The report calls for the cancellation of two costly Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear facilities, the postponement of the Air Force’s new nuclear bomber, and the reduction of the Navy’s ballistic missile submarine force. While the report calculates that these changes will yield taxpayers a savings of $46 billion over the next two decades, it says that “any effort to downsize the nation’s nuclear force is likely to be met with fierce opposition from the individuals and institutions that benefit from the nuclear status quo.”

Among those who benefit from the status quo are the contractors that manage two DOE nuclear facilities highlighted in the report—the proposed Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility and the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. The contractors connected to the two facilities contributed more than $240,000 to members of Congress during the 2012 election cycle and nearly $2.3 million over the course of the members’ tenures in Congress.

Former Congressional, SEC Officials Take a Spin through JPMorgan's Revolving Door

By MICHAEL SMALLBERG

At the height of the bailout, Goldman Sachs earned the nickname "Government Sachs" thanks to the legions of former Goldman executives who landed jobs at the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department.

Now it looks like JPMorgan is giving Goldman a run for its money.

Lee Fang at Republic Report noted this week that the staff director of the Senate Banking Committee—which is preparing a series of hearings to investigate JPMorgan’s $3 billion trading loss—is none other than Dwight Fettig, a former lobbyist who represented JPMorgan before Congress as recently as 2010. Fettig has also lobbied on behalf of Freddie Mac and the American Bankers Association, among other financial industry clients.

Before he became a lobbyist, Fettig was a legislative director for Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), the current Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. According to his bio, Fettig had a “particular focus” on legislation such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed many of the Glass-Steagall provisions that had required a separation of commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies. (The final report by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission cited several regulatory officials who noted that Gramm-Leach-Bliley created an “obstacle that prevented each [regulator] from obtaining a complete understanding of the risks assumed by large financial firms.”)

Follow the Defense Dollars -- If You Can

By JOE NEWMAN

Remember last summer when everyone thought the sky was falling?

The mounting budget deficit had Chicken Littles on both sides of the aisle crying doom and gloom. There was hemming and hawing and the obligatory appointment of a special-joint-bipartisan-really-important congressional panel.

Super Committee, anyone?

It seems the more things change, the more they stay exactly the same.

As Congress gets down this month to approving hundreds of billions of dollars in national security programs and policies, the deficit is hardly front and center.

The version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that the House of Representatives passed Friday is $3 billion fatter than President Obama's defense budget request and about $58 billion more than the potential automatic cut established by the House-approved budget deal from last year.

Seriously?

POGO Opposes Legislation Allowing Contractors to Pay-to-Play in Secret

By SUZANNE DERSHOWITZ and ANGELA CANTERBURY

Yesterday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) passed one of those euphemistically-named bills that does the opposite of what it says it will do. S.1100, the so-called "Keeping Politics Out of Federal Contracting Act," would actually ban public disclosure of certain election spending by contractors—thus leading to more pay-to-play by government contractors. Earlier this week, POGO and our allies sent a letter to Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Ranking Member Susan Collins (R-ME) opposing S.1100.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) voiced similar concerns about the bill during yesterday’s committee meeting: “At a time where we’re trying to curb secret money in campaigns, I think this legislation takes away one of the few tools...I’ve said from the beginning, I don’t think corporations should have more power than people.”

POGO couldn’t agree more with Sen. Tester’s sentiments that passage of this bill would mean closing the door on an opportunity to require disclosure where there currently is none. It appears that his was the only recorded “no” vote on S.1100. We strongly urge other Senators to follow his lead in opposing this outright ban on transparency should it be considered by the full Senate.

Rep. Wolf Tries to Stop Flock of Colleagues Going Through Lobbying Revolving Door

By LYDIA DENNETT 

Former elected officials lobbying for foreign dictators may be big business in DC, but one Member of Congress is trying to slow down the revolving door between the Hill and lobbying shops that work on behalf of interests outside the U.S.

Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) recently introduced the Foreign Lobbying Reform Act (H.R. 4343), which would prohibit high-ranking government officials like the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and ambassadors from lobbying on behalf of foreign governments for ten years after leaving office.

According to Rep. Wolf, “serving in Congress or as a United States ambassador is a high honor and people should not walk out of government one day and then trade on their service the next, especially for governments who do not share the same values as the United States.”