This morning the Heritage Foundation’s investigative reporters, Rob Bluey and Lachlan Markay, published an interesting article alleging that the Obama administration allocated federal dollars in a way so as to “buy” the votes of Congressional legislators on certain key pieces of legislation. The authors focus on the discretionary budgets of various federal agencies, which can
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Congressman Buck McKeon (R-CA), the Armed Services Committee chairman best known today for his unapologetic support for pork spending for military contractors, has faced a recent wave of stories concerning evidence that suggests that he has used his elected office to directly benefit himself and his family. First, the Wall Street Journal last month reported
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Late last year, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) — Chairman of Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands of the Natural Resources Committee — raised eyebrows when he began aggressively advocating for mining on and selling off public lands. He even told ThinkProgress reporters that he favored mining in an area around the Grand Canyon
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Early this month, the Republic Report’s Lee Fang broke the story that Patricia McKeon, the wife of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), had taken major campaign contributions from the defense industry in her state legislature race. It is entirely likely that the defense industry is trying to influence the congressman by
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Last year, Congress passed three trade deals with foreign countries — South Korea, Panama, and Colombia. Although these deals were referred to in mainstream political debate as “free trade” agreements, the truth is that all three agreements protected certain industries over others rather than completely drop trade barriers.  The agreements, like past free trade pacts, also
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This week’s Washington Post series on earmarks concretizes what we all essentially knew: they’re still at it. “A U.S. senator from South Dakota helped add millions to a Pentagon program his wife evaluated as a contract employee. A Washington congressman boosted the budget of an environmental group that his son ran as executive director. A
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Republic Report’s Zaid Jilani contributed to this piece. Republic Report is here at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. today, where thousands of conservative activists and politicians are gathering to discuss politics and policy. We’re curious to find out what conservatives think about the issue of money in politics and were excited
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Just two hours ago, the House of Representatives passed the Stock Act, a measure to curb insider trading by lawmakers and some federal officials. The bill Congress voted on today, however, is different than the legislation that passed out of the Senate last week. Last week, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) attached a strong transparency amendment
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