Here you can check to see if your congressperson secured earmarks for the TMA Group, of which you may have heard relative to the unfolding scandals involving democratic PA Congressman John Murtha, and how much PMA paid your congressperson for the favor.

The entire Congressional Quarterly report may be found here.

Those who have read Dee Brown's book Hear that Lonesome Whistle Blow know that in the latter half of the 1800s those desiring railroad grants, which usually paid by the mile of track laid in both cash from the federal treasury and federal land, would essentially buy congresspersons to secure congressional railroad grants. (That's how Jim Hill, the Empire Builder, secured millions of acres of land through the Cascade Mountains, which he later sold to Frederick Weyerhaeuser.)

The only difference between the cash stuffed envelopes of the railroad grant days and today is that congress has legalized the bribery, so long as all of the proper reports are filed.

Congressional corruption and bribery is as old as the republic. Actually older, as a number of members of the Continental Congress engaged in war profiteering during the revolutionary war.