The Center for Public Integrity

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is “trying to break that tight bond between” the “iron triangle of Congress and industry and the bureaucracy in” the Pentagon — which the Center highlighted in its story “The Murtha Method” — according to a Defense Department press secretary. The spokesman was reacting to a question about the Center’s investigation at yesterday’s press briefing.

For months, a cloud has swirled around Congressman John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, and the relationship that Murtha and other subcommittee members had with the PMA Group, a lobbying firm filled with former subcommittee aides.

Though the past six months have been financially beneficial to the Blue Dog Coalition, it appears that the Dogs’ fundraising intake has slowed, despite all the attention the coalition has received.

After our report last week about the hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions flowing from the energy, financial services, and health care sectors to the Blue Dog Democrats’ political action committee, a number of people have asked us about the other group of centrist Democrats in the U.S. House, the 68-member New Democrat Coalition (NDC).

Following the coverage yesterday about the role of fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the U.S. House who seem to have stymied President Obama’s health care reform timeline (including our story yesterday on the group’s campaign contributors), the Blue Dogs have now come under fire from a key group of fellow Dems.

Our examination of contributions to the political action committee of those fiscally conservative Democrats, the Blue Dogs, showed that the energy, financial services, and health care sectors were the top givers.

Whether the subject is health care reform, climate change, or pay-as-you-go budgeting rules, almost everyone, it seems, suddenly wants to talk with the Blue Dogs. President Obama’s White House meeting with members of the fiscally conservative Democratic coalition earlier this week is but the latest indication that the Blue Dogs — 52 members strong — have deftly turned themselves into a key voting bloc at the nexus of power. With them, the Democrats do not need a single Republican to back their legislation; without them, the Democratic agenda would be in serious peril. And as their clout has expanded, fundraising has grown accordingly, not just from traditionally Democratic contributors, but from unexpected quarters as well.

Critical deadlines are looming to renew funding for transportation projects, but there are differing approaches to the problem in the House and Senate, and different committee structures for dealing with the issue. That may explain some campaign fundraising disparities as well.

Backers of high-speed rail service have never been more excited. Thanks to the unabashed enthusiasm of the Obama administration, $13 billion in new federal funding may suddenly be available, courtesy of the stimulus package and the president’s budget proposal. But as a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing made clear Wednesday, there’s still a long path to travel in transforming American high speed rail from pipe dream to reality.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this week introduced another bill to reauthorize the currently leaderless and conflict-ridden Federal Aviation Administration. More than a year after the current act was first extended, new funding needed to tackle a host of aviation issues has been, as one Congressman put it, stuck on the tarmac.