Campaign 2010

Mar 11, 2010

Will Pete “Blimpy” Sessions Support Earmark Reform?

After the House Appropriations Committee announced it will no longer accept earmarks benefiting for-profit companies, Democrats questioned whether Representative Pete Sessions, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, will support the reform. Sessions has come under fire for steering a $1.6 million earmark for blimp research to a company with no experience whose lobbyist was a former Sessions aide with a criminal record.

 

“The question today is whether Representative Sessions will truly support a ban on earmarks that benefit for-profit companies or will he limit earmarks only to unwarranted projects for former staffers with criminal records like he’s fought for in the past?” said Jesse Ferguson, Southern Regional Press Secretary at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “For Republicans to talk about earmark reform while standing behind their campaign leader who got unjustified earmarks for former staffers with criminal records is more than a bit suspect. For Pete Sessions’ Republican caucus to talk about earmark reform is like Jenna Jameson giving a helpful lesson on chastity.”

 

 

Background

 

  • “Rep. Pete Sessions — the chief of the Republicans’ campaign arm in the House — says on his website that earmarks have become “a symbol of a broken Washington to the American people.” Yet in 2008, Sessions himself steered a $1.6 million earmark for dirigible research to an Illinois company whose president acknowledges having no experience in government contracting, let alone in building blimps. What the company did have: the help of Adrian Plesha, a former Sessions aide with a criminal record who has made more than $446,000 lobbying on its behalf.” [Politico, 7/30/2009]

 

  • Sessions held a fundraising event at a Las Vegas strip club for his leadership committee, joined by casino executives and payday lenders at Forty Deuce nightclub, located in the Mandalay Bay Restort. [NPR, 7/22/08]

 

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