The New York Times has a major story this morning
http://www.nytimes.com/...
on trading votes for "pork barrel" spending in the member's districts.
The gist of the article is that Murtha leads a small group of democrats who will vote with the republicans in exchange for massive amounts of defense spending being specifically directed to their districts.
He has sided with Republicans 169 times on close votes since 1994, more often than all but three of the most conservative Democrats. Many of those votes have been on nonideological but politically pivotal questions. For example, Mr. Murtha has often led members from his corner crowd to vote for procedural rules that limit potential amendments or debate on Republican bills -- votes that typically follow party loyalty.
More below...
Murtha may be leading the fight on calling out the Republicans Iraq strategy (or lack there of), but he also seems to be very openly defending the culture of getting things done by trading votes for money being directed to his district. I guess we should be greatful that he doesn't take any of the money personally (although he was apparently on the fence in the beginning of the Abscam affair).
What is the answer: I think that it is more-or-less common practice for congress people to agree to vote for a bill if it includes one section which is their key priority. It is also common practice for a congress person's key priority to be a large employer in their district. I expect that this is true for even the more progressive members, and that the people in the district (especially the union members in the big defence plants) think that it is a good thing. For the country as a whole, this seems like a bad thing, but for each individual district, it seems like a good thing.
What are we supposed to do?
Mr. Murtha installed a new system that the Republicans have continued: the chairman and ranking member work out the details behind closed doors, pack the bill with plenty of earmarks, and link future projects for members to their support for the bill. The appropriations committee now typically debates and approves the bill in less than eight minutes and the full House in less than half an hour. (The $437 billion measure passed last week took under 20 minutes.)
"The defense community has some presence in almost every Congressional district -- or so long as you vote for the bill, it does," said Mr. Moran, the Virginia Democrat. Mr. Murtha would "see to it" that members understood that those with earmarks in the bill who considered voting against it "better set their sights lower the next time," Mr. Moran said.
This system works because the people in the district care a lot about a major employer in their district, but only care a little about democracy being corrupted one bill at a time.
I've seen it happen. I spent some of my teen age years in Burlington Vermont (where Bernie Sanders had been the mayor, and Howard Dean had been governor). One of the major employers was (then) a GE plant which made equipment for mounting machine guns in helicopters.