As you probably know, after promising on the campaign trail to eliminate earmarks, President Obama signed the omnibus spending bill this week totaling $410 billion, including nearly 9,000 earmarks. What’s more disturbing is that forty percent of the earmark requests were from Republicans. When will we ever learn?

This week, I also introduced my third resolution asking Congress to open up an ethics investigation to look at the correlation between earmarks and campaign contributions. While we were defeated again, please know that I will continue to offer resolutions on the pay-to-play connection between earmarking and campaign contributions until my colleagues in Congress agree that we need a higher ethical standard on the issue.

The San Francisco Examiner ran an opinion piece last Friday on my efforts to eliminate earmarks. I hope you’ll take a few moments to read it and share it with your friends and family members.

Jeff Flake pounds Congress on earmark evasion

San Francisco Examiner, Staff Writer (3/13/0)

Congress on Tuesday shamed itself by going on record, yet again, for what amounts to operating as its own protection racket. The House voted down a resolution by Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., asking the Ethics Committee to investigate whether there were any quid pro quos between federal spending earmarks and campaign donations linked to the now-disbanded lobbying firm known as the PMA Group. This was the third time in a few weeks the House defeated the Flake amendment. The PMA Group, which mostly handled defense issues, is under federal investigation specifically related to political contributions. The company was founded by a former key aide to Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn.

On Feb. 19, CQ Today reported that 104 House members (nearly a quarter of all representatives) sponsored earmarks for PMA Group clients in last year’s Defense Appropriations bill, and that 87 percent of those members received PMA campaign cash. Even after the announcement of the FBI raid on the firm’s offices, PMA clients received congressional earmarks worth at least $8 million in the omnibus spending bill President Barack Obama just signed into law. As Flake’s resolution accurately described it, “The federal investigation of the firm raise[s] concern about the integrity of congressional proceedings and the dignity of the institution of Congress.”

Each time he offered the resolution, Flake made it more focused. On Feb. 23, he asked broadly for an investigation into the relationship between earmark requests already made by House members and the source and timing of past campaign contributions. Opponents said that sounded like too much of a fishing expedition. On March 3, Flake specified that the investigation should solely focus on past earmarks and contributions related to the PMA Group. Opponents then complained that the group had been around for too many years to allow investigation of all past earmarks. So on Tuesday, Flake narrowed the search further to apply just to PMA-related earmarks for this fiscal year — an utterly reasonable request. Still, the House voted no, 228-184, with four Republicans joining all but 22 Democrats to block investigation.

Do these people think they are invisible? Cover my back and I’ll cover yours is the way too many in Congress view ethics issues. But Flake should not give up. He ought to offer a new resolution, again tied to 2009 PMA-related earmarks, and this time specify just which clauses of Chapter Four of the House Ethics Manual might be implicated. Members who vote again to sweep such a resolution under the rug might as well wear a sign that says Corruption-R-Us. We’ll publish their names.

In case you missed it on Wednesday night, I appeared on Sean Hannity's show on Fox News to discuss earmarks in the omnibus spending bill and the pay-to-play mentality in Congress. I've included the link to the segment for your convenience.