Buying a Congressman Can Be A Really Good Investment

Don Surber reports:

You bought Google at $100 and 3 years later is nearing $600 a share? Big deal. Microsoft has gone up 28-fold over the last 20 years? Yawn. You want to make the big bucks? Rent a congressman. Your return on your investment can be as high as $75 for every dollar invested.

Just ask the good folks at PMA Group, a lobbying firm. They sank $1,333,074 into the campaigns last year of 3 Democratic members of the House defense appropriations subcommittee and walked away with $100.5 million in defense earmarks for PMA clients, Roll Call reported.

That means for every buck they spent, their clients got back $75.39. In less than 1 year.

The 3 Democratic rent-to-own congressmen are John Murtha, Jim Moran and Peter Visclosky. These antiwar Democrats see nothing wrong with steering military money to PMA clients.

And why not? PMA money made up 20% of Murtha’s war chest, 18% of the Moran money and 33% of the Visclosky dough. For 2008, PMA already has steered $542,500 to the 3 amigos.

Money is not the only object. The firm was founded by Paul Magliochetti, who worked for Murtha on the defense appropriations subcommittee. Richard Kaelin went from being Visclosky’s chief of staff to lobbying for PMA.

Culture of corruption? Congressional Democrats seem to have invented it. The whole story is here. Hat tip: My Washington bureau.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the heads up on this one.