Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) took to the floor late Tuesday night to defend his earmark for the infamous “bridge to nowhere,” and another that secured $10 million for a road in Florida that benefited a campaign contributor.

“I was always proud of my earmarks. I believe in earmarks, always have, as long as they are exposed. But don’t you ever call that a scandal,” he said.

Young made the comments at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday night, according to Democratic sources, half an hour before Democrats gave up on their torturous attempt to pass the Homeland Security spending bill that Republicans successfully bogged down with parliamentary procedures.

“You voted for it four times,” Young told Obey, referring to the bridge-to-nowhere. “Most of the people in this room voted for it four times. It was always transparent.”

Young was responding to criticism from Obey, who repeatedly lambasted Young and former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) for their efforts to secure earmarks while vigorously defending his own earmark disclosure policy and denying that Democrats were keeping earmarks secret.

Immediately before Young took to the floor, Obey recited a litany of controversial tactics Republicans employed while in the majority, asking them to keep the dialogue civil. He reminded Republicans of when they held a 15-minute vote on the Medicare prescription drug bill open for three hours, cited news stories of how they promised earmarks in the transportation bill in return for votes on the Medicare bill and referred to three major GOP scandals in the last two years.

“We had the Cunningham affair, then the bridge-to-nowhere, which caused a lot of heartburn around the country; and now, just recently, we have another story suggesting that the committee chairman then, the gentleman from Alaska, inserted a project for Florida.”

Under Obey’s process, earmarks would not be disclosed until late in the appropriations process, during House and Senate spending conferences. The earmarks would be entered into the Congressional Record before the August recess, but they could not be stricken from a conference report on a floor vote.

“It took you a couple of years to find out what Duke Cunningham did,” Obey told reporters yesterday. “It took a year to find Don Young’s highway in Florida.”

Making the comments was a bold move for Young, who has been facing scrutiny on a number of fronts recently.

Young has close ties to former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is in jail and cooperating with federal prosecutors before facing sentencing on another charge. In April, Mark Zachares, a former Young staffer and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands employee, pleaded guilty to a list of charges stemming from his involvement in the Abramoff scandal. Media reports also have scrutinized his involvement in setting aside earmarks for a pipeline project that benefited a company that employed Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’s (R) son, Ben.

Last week, The New York Times published a story about Young’s role in securing a $10 million earmark for Florida’s Coconut Road and how it benefited one of his campaign contributors.

House Democratic Party officials, who are targeting Young for defeat, immediately seized on the comments as evidence that the Alaska Republican is out of touch with public concern about earmarks and the role they played in several recent political scandals.

“Congressman Young’s boondoggles are nothing to be ‘proud’ of — wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on campaign contributors’ pet projects instead of securing our nation is scandalous,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Crider, said in a release. “Congressman Young seems to have taken the ‘bridge to nowhere’ to the land of delusion.”

Watchdog groups, the media and conservative groups panned the so-called bridge-to-nowhere when it was uncovered in the bill in late 2005. The Heritage Foundation called it a “national embarrassment.” The bridge in Alaska would connect the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) with its airport on the Island of Gravina (population 50) at a cost to federal taxpayers of $320 million, by way of three separate earmarks that Young and Stevens worked to insert into the 2005 transportation bill when Young was chairman of the panel.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) yesterday said Young’s declaration of pride in the earmarks would contribute to a perception that GOP attacks on Democrats’ earmark transparency policies ring hollow.

 “It’s like vegetarians planning for the slaughter of beef … they’re born-again earmarkers,” he said.
Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the Rules Committee who has complained all year about what he regards as unfair Democratic parliamentary tactics, said Young didn’t talk to him and, he believed, didn’t talk to other House GOP leaders before going to the floor to make his comments. Dreier, however, brushed aside any claims that Young’s comments undermined the Republicans’ efforts this week to fight Obey’s earmark tactics.

“Virtually every member would stand up and say they are proud of their earmarks, they are proud of what they’ve done,” he said.

“Folks in my district like the earmarks I get for them,” added Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.), a former chairman of the Appropriations panel. “I think that’s true for everyone — that’s why there’s 32,000 earmark request this year.”