Earmarks Are Bad Unless You're Darrel Issa

Darrel Issa has spoken out against earmarks. So what's he doing requestingseveral for his district? Especially when it directly benefits him? Our friends at Think Progress explain:

One of Issa’s most valuable properties, a medical office building at 2067 West Vista Way in Vista, California, is called the Vista Medical Center, and was purchased in 2008 for $16.6 million. Described as “a long-term investment,” the property was bought by a company called Viper LLC, a business entity operated by Issa’s family that Issa has up to a $25 million dollar stake in.

Around the same time Issa made the Vista Medical Center purchase, the congressman began requesting millions of dollars worth of earmarks to widen and improve the highway adjacent to the building. In 2008, he requested $2 million to expand West Vista Way, the road in front of his “long-term investment,” but only received $245,000 from the government. The next year, Issa made another earmark request for improving the West Vista Way highway next to his building. He earmarked another $570,000, bringing his total to $815,000, to add parking lots, widen the road, add bus stops, improve the sewer system, and other utility work.
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As ethics experts have explained, lawmakers should avoid earmarks in the immediate area of their own business interests.

Issa attempted to rebut the Think Progress report, stating he had not asked for any earmarks after purchase of the building, but the record shows otherwise:

– February 2009: A few months after closing the deal on his multi-million dollar Vista Medical Plaza office building, Issa pushes for his West Vista Way earmark in the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009. Unlike any of Issa’s other earmarks, Issa secured two separate earmarks for West Vista Way into the bill: one for $245,000 and another for $570,000.

– February 2009: Although Issa publicly listed over $200 million in earmarks for the FY2009 budget, he only secured a few. He did not obtain a million dollar Boys and Girl grant, nor did he secure one for a flood control grant in his district. Out of all of the earmarks he publicly listed, the West Vista Way one seemed to fair better than most.

– March 11, 2009: President Obama signs the Omnibus into law, granting a total of $815,000 to the West Vista Way project for Issa. Issa later begins advertising his Vista Medical Plaza and its “Excellent Access with Freeway Visibility.”

It's clear that Issa continued to ask for earmarks that would specifically benefit his interests well after he bought the building.

The North County Times, a San Diego/Riverside county local newspaper, took the local Tea Party to task for not criticizing Issa:

In October 2008, Issa's family business purchased a $16.6 million medical complex on West Vista Way, less than two miles from two other Issa investment properties and smack dab in the middle of $2 million in earmark requests that Issa had sponsored earlier that year. When the Omnibus Appropriations Act passed in February 2009, it included $815,000 in Issa-sponsored earmarks for West Vista Way.

In March 2010, just months before calling tea partiers "not angry enough," Issa famously swore off earmarks, declaring, "An earmark is tantamount to a bribe."

Apparently, Darrell Issa was for bribing himself with your tax dollars, before he was against it.

Considering the tea party's silence, we can only presume it agrees.

This just demonstrates two things. First, Issa will do what's good for Issa, regardless of the interests of his constituents, or morality. Second, the Tea Party is not interested in good governance; they are interested in no governance. Darrel Issa's kind of governance.

[Editor - Updated to correct my previous misspelling of Mr. Issa's first name. Apologies, Mr. Issa.]