Rick Renzi, Indicted Former Congressman, Getting His Earmarks Through

If you don't like the $1.2 million in earmarks shoved into a Congressional spending bill headed for a vote in the U.S. Senate, it may be tough to get ahold of the man responsible: Indicted Former Congressman Rick Renzi. USA Today reports that Renzi is one of several former...

By Ray Stern

March 5, 2009

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If you don't like the $1.2 million in earmarks shoved into a Congressional spending bill headed for a vote in the U.S. Senate, it may be tough to get ahold of the man responsible: Indicted Former Congressman Rick Renzi. USA Today reports that Renzi is one of several former lawmakers who tucked 458 pet projects into a bill that's said to be needed to keep the government running through September. Renzi's projects include a drug enforcement program in Pinal County and road and bridge construction.

Shamed former Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, infamously caught propositioning an undercover officer in an airport restroom, also managed to get a million bucks worth of earmarks in the bill.

Most of the pork-shoveling former lawmakers were Republican, naturally, considering the left-leaning results of the last election. But at least one former Democrat Congresswoman, Hilda Solis (above), was on the list. She's President Obama's Labor Secretary.

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Ray Stern is the former news editor of Phoenix New Times. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Arizona for more than two decades. He's won numerous awards for his reporting, including the Arizona Press Club's Don Bolles Award for Investigative Journalism.