In a post yesterday, Matt brings up a very interesting New York Times article, specifically focusing on Republican efforts to undermine the service's potential for profitablity. Matt writes, "Amtrak doesn't 'know' how to lose money - the Bush administration is forcing Amtrak to lose money."

Reading further down in The Times' article, which was penned by Matthew L. Wald and Glen Justice, another important fact emerges: the Republican lobbying scandal is not in any way limited to Jack Abramoff or Mitchell Wade.

The order [to carry "premium" freight cars], contained in the transportation bill signed by President Bush last month, was inserted late in the process by Representative Joe Knollenberg, an appropriations subcommittee chairman from Michigan. The Detroit businessman who owns the only company that supplies such rail cars happens to be a large donor to Mr. Knollenberg, a Republican, and other Michigan lawmakers.

Mr. Knollenberg acknowledged that the order, known in Washington as an earmark, was likely to help the businessman, Anthony Soave, and his company, ExpressTrak. But he said the main goal was to help Amtrak make money by hauling freight.

Until Friday, he had aggressively defended the provision.

"If you do it right, you are not just throwing money at the wall," he said in an interview on Wednesday. "It gives this idea some push to make it produce some profit. I think there is some possibility of this succeeding."

But Mr. Knollenberg changed course Friday afternoon. After documents obtained by The New York Times raised questions about lobbying by ExpressTrak and its lawyers to obtain the $8.3 million for Amtrak, Mr. Knollenberg released a statement saying he would work to reverse the legislation.

Over the past eleven years, but particularly during the last five, Congressional Republicans have given away their legislative authority to corporate lobbyists hoping to score government largesse for their clients. Whether they're doing this for free simply because it's an essential tenet of their ideology (a possibility in Knollenberg's case) or because they're on the lobbyist's payroll (as was the case with Randy "Duke" Cunningham), it seems clear that Republicans no longer care what lobbyists are asking them to put in legislation -- they're just doing it. If ever there were a time for Democrats to introduce real lobbying reform to talk about it on a national level, this would be it.

On a more local level, Knollenberg represents one of the least Republican districts of any GOP Congressman; during the 2004 campaign, George W. Bush won Michigan's ninth congressional district with only about 50 percent of the vote. Despite outspending his 2004 challenger Steven Reifman by more than a ten to one margin, Knollenberg still only brought in 58 percent of the vote.

As of the end of September, no Democrat in the race filing with the FEC had much money on hand, a disappointing situation given Knollenberg's nearly $1 million cash-on-hand. Given the partisan balance of the district and the new development in the race -- specifically that Knollenberg has essentially admitted to shilling for a corporate lobbyist in his district (as reported in the aforementioned Times piece) -- it would be foolish for the Michigan Democratic Party and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to overlook this race. If they can recruit a Democrat with sufficient organizational prowess and connections to raise some money in this race, Knollenberg might not be able to win an eighth term in the House.