Murtha defends earmarks

WASHINGTON, June 4 (UPI) -- The Democrat chairman of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense has defended the earmarking of the federal budget.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was asked at the end of an extensive interview on ABC's "This Week" Sunday about a row over a drug intelligence center in his home district he demanded be funded in the current intelligence authorization bill.

Such line items inserted into congressional funding measures by lawmakers, which directly benefit campaign contributors or projects and businesses based in their home districts, are known as earmarks.

Murtha said more than 4,000 requests for changes to the federal budget had been received by lawmakers working on the appropriations bills -- the legislation that sets out in greatest detail how the money Congress provides the administration is to be spent.

"There's 4,000 people that asked for a change in the budget," he said. "Everybody has an opportunity to offer amendments."

Murtha said only by amending the budget could lawmakers make sure that the administration was getting it right. "Many of the changes we made have been a real benefit to the country," he said. "The American Congress has every opportunity to make changes in the direction of the budget that's made by these bureaucrats in Washington."

Murtha also personally confirmed, for the first time, that he had angrily confronted a Republican colleague who challenged his drug intelligence center earmark and tried to have it removed from the intelligence bill. "I apologized for my outburst," he told ABC.