Pombo Implicated in Report on Corruption

• Pombo was among many Republican implicated in the newly released report from Rep. Louise Slaughter, ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee and Democratic staff, entitled America for Sale: The Cost of Republican Corruption - A Congressional Report on How America Is Being Sold to the Highest Bidder. First I'll provide a list of those implicated, including Richard Pombo. Below that you can find a Blog posted by Representative Slaughter on MYDD. To Go Directly to the report Click Here.

Mydd: list of Republicans implicated by the report.

Implicated in America for Sale
Current/Former GOP Congressional Leaders
Fmr. Rep. Dick Armey* (TX) 74, 80, 84, 92, 101Roy Blunt (MO) 107John
Boehner* (OH) 10, 78, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97Eric Cantor (VA)
107Tom DeLay (TX) 4, 6, 35, 36, 67, 68, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 92, 93, 96, 98,
99, 102, 103, 104, 107, 110, 111John T. Doolittle (CA) 67, 68, 86, 109Dennis
Hastert (IL) 15, 68, 71, 74, 107, 109Fmr. Rep. Bill Paxon* (NY) 92, 93Deborah
Pryce (OH) 109 Fmr. Rep. J.C. Watts (OK) 74
Current/Former US Congressional
Members
Joe Barton* (TX) 35, 36Kevin Brady (TX) 110 John Culberson (TX) 110
Fmr. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (CA) 6, 65, 66, 67Tom Feeney (FL) 108Virgil Goode
(VA) 66Doc Hastings* (WA) 81Duncan Hunter* (CA) 67Joe Knollenberg (MI) 52Steven
C. LaTourette (OH) 106, 107 Jerry Lewis* (CA) 67Jim McCrery (LA) 108 Candice S.
Miller (MI) 16Bob Ney* (OH) 105, 106 Michael Oxley* (OH) 95Richard Pombo* (CA)
86Hal Rogers (KY) 51Dana Rohrabacher (CA) 31Pete Sessions (TX) 110 Fmr. Rep.
Billy Tauzin* (LA) 17, 35, 37Don Young* (AK) 106, 107*Denotes Current/Former
Committee Chairs
Current, Former GOP Administrative Officials
Michael
Brown- 53, 62Vice President Dick Cheney- 29, 30, 34, 35, 59, 60Philip A. Cooney-
31Timothy Flanigan- 84J. Steven Griles- 31, 111, 112John McManus- 17Julie L.
Myers- 53Gale Norton- 107, 111, 112Phillip J. Perry- 50Karl Rove- 61, 85David
Safavian- 85, 106Thomas Scully- 16, 17
Current, Former Congressional
Staffers
Ed Buckham (DeLay)- 81, 98, 104Tony Rudy (DeLay)- 96, 102, 110, 111
Michael Scanlon (DeLay)- 81, 96, 110 Neil Volz (Ney)- 106, 107
GOP
Operatives/Friends
Jack Abramoff 2, 5, 6, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 95,96,
98-112Italia Federici 111, 112Adam Kidan- 106Ken Lay- 30Grover Norquist- 94, 98,
103, 111Ralph Reed- 103, 108

• Report from the House - America for Sale: The Cost of Republican Corruption
  by Rep Louise Slaughter, Wed Feb 22, 2006 at 10:29:10 AM EST

Good morning folks. So here is our report, America for
Sale: The Cost of Republican Corruption, which we released today to explain
how the corruption in Republican-controlled Washington has harmed our country.
It shows how the harmful policies Republicans have passed into law over
the past few years are the result of a corrupt process that gives "K Street
Project" lobbyists more power to shape legislation than the legislators the
people have elected to represent them in Washington.

Our report clearly demonstrates that when the GOP Congressional
leaders allow Republican lobbyists to set the agenda and write the bills, the
American people suffer the consequences. While the special interests walk away
with billions of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies, and federal contracts,
Americans must live with the bad laws this system produces. The political
corruption we associate with now-notorious figures such as Duke Cunningham and
Jack Abramoff comes at a very real cost to each and every one of us. - LMS

For the first time, this report tries to quantify the
damage the Republican Congress and Bush White House have inflicted on our
country. Here are a few numbers to consider:

*14.2 million American seniors (including millions of our sickest
and most vulnerable seniors) are stuck in a complicated, expensive, and
inefficient Medicare prescription drug program because the Republican Congress
and the Bush Administration allowed lobbyists from the insurance and
pharmaceutical industries to design this program.

*60 million American families who heat their homes with natural
gas and 8 million families who heat with heating oil are paying higher bills
this winter, even though the Republican Congress recently passed their "national
energy plan" into law. Although this plan gives the energy industry
billions in new tax breaks and subsidies, it doesn't lower prices for consumers
or make our country more energy independent.

*The 150,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Iraq may not have
the equipment they need because of waste, fraud and cronyism by the Republican
Congress and the Department of Defense. While Halliburton and other
companies with Republican connections get their contracts, our soldiers still
don't have the body armor and armored vehicles they need to fight the war.

*750,000 households in the Gulf region are still displaced today,
more than 5 months after Hurricane Katrina hit that region, at least in part
because the political hacks the Bush Administration put in charge of crucial
homeland security functions were not adequately prepared to prepare for or
respond to this disaster.

*More than 10 million students and their families will have larger
student loans to repay because House Republicans, led by new Majority Leader
John Boehner working hand-in-hand with his commercial loan industry allies, cut
$12 billion from the student loan program in the recent reconciliation bill and
shifted the costs on to students and their families.

These numbers, along with the many others documented in this
report, should deeply concern all Americans.

A true culture of corruption has developed under today's
Republican Congress and Republican White House, and the real-life costs it has,
and continues to have, for everyday Americans are staggering. The recent, and
unprecedented, subversion of our legislative process and federal government is
not simply an "inside the beltway" problem. America - all of America - is
literally for sale.

Our government is working on behalf of the special interests, not
the public interest, and the time for a change is long overdue. Here are few
examples taken from different sections of this report showing that Republican
politicians have taken care of special interests instead of the American people:

A Confusing and Expensive Medicare Program Millions of American
seniors have been forced into a confusing and expensive new Medicare drug
program that was not created for them, but for the insurance and drug industries
who were given special access to shape this legislation.

An Energy "Strategy" That Saves No Energy While American
consumers must live with an energy policy that the Energy Department itself has
found will not reduce our high oil and gas prices, the Republican Congress and
the Bush Administration have rewarded the oil companies with billions of dollars
in new tax breaks and subsidies.

Polluters Re-Writing Environmental Laws The quality of the
air we breathe and the water we drink has been degraded because energy lobbyists
temporarily working in the Bush Administration have undermined some of our
country's most important environmental standards.

A Nation Still Vulnerable to Terrorist Attacks No American
citizen can be sure that the billions of dollars the federal government is
spending on homeland security projects are making us safer, rather than just
making politically-connected defense contractors richer.

A Government Run by Political Hacks Americans have no
confidence that their government will be able to adequately respond if a
disaster (natural or man-made) strikes their community, because its agencies are
staffed not by professionals, but by political cronies and lobbyists like
Michael Brown, who botched the federal government's response to Hurricane
Katrina.

Fat Cats Get Their Defense Contracts, but Soldiers Don't Get Their
Body Armor American soldiers and their families don't know if they are
going to have the body armor and other supplies they need to fight in Iraq,
because Members of Congress are instead steering hundreds of millions of dollars
to defense contracts for products and services the military often says it does
not need and, at the same time, unscrupulous contractors like Halliburton are
defrauding the government of millions of dollars.

Drug Companies Get Off the Hook if Their Products Injure Americans
While American citizens, public health officials, and first responders
worry about how our country would handle the outbreak of a flu pandemic, the
Republican Congress recently relieved the pharmaceutical industry of any
responsibility for the harm their vaccines or other products might cause during
such a crisis.

Corporate Profits Up, American Family Income Down While
record numbers of American workers are losing their good-paying jobs as well as
their health and pension benefits, large corporations are enjoying new tax
breaks and record profits, and are still free to move their corporate
organizations overseas to avoid taxes.

Student Loan Debt, Student Loan Industry Profits Both at Record
Highs Thanks to the efforts of newly-elected Majority Leader John Boehner,
private student loan companies are some of the most profitable companies in
America and American students are graduating with record student loan debt.

People need to how the Republicans in Washington have created a
culture that breeds corruption and this concern is not just a partisan one.
Check out couple of these comments from my colleagues on the other side of the
isle in House of Representatives:

"Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, and the ongoing and
disgusting saga of abuse of power and public trust are not just made up by the
Democrats." - Representative Mark Edward Souder (R-IN)

"We simply have too much power...We Republicans have abused that
power badly over the past several years." - Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ)

I urge you to read this report and share it with your family,
friends, neighbors who may not be as politically plugged in as you all.
They have a right to know that their government is working on behalf of
the special interests, not the public interest.

Again, if you have any questions/comments about this report,
please let us know by posting your thoughts here. As I said above I will be
lurking in and out of here this morning try to answer some of your
questions/comments this morning as best as I can. Thanks so much again for the
wonderful feedback and support from your wonderful community.

(Source)

Full Report Available Here.