POLITICO.com on FutureGen: Stimulus serves up Obama [climate swindle pork for Illinois]

Their effort got a boost from an intense lobbying push put on by supporters of the plan. A Washington Post analysis in March found that more than $20 million has been spent to hire lobbying firms that have petitioned members of Congress on FutureGen and other clean-coal issues. Under Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the state of Illinois paid more than $500,000 to the lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates to push for the FutureGen project on Capitol Hill.

The push succeeded. And when the stimulus bill came up in January, it seemed like a perfect vehicle for the massive energy project.

In e-mails circulated among Hill staffers drafting the bill, one proposed line-item noted that the Senate version of the bill contained $2 billion for “FutureGen” in the Energy and Water section of the bill.

But by the time the bill passed, FutureGen was not singled out by name — which would make it fit the technical definition of an earmark. Instead, the bill language spelled out that $3.4 billion would be spent on “Fossil Energy Research and Development.”

FutureGen had an enormous amount of political juice with the new administration. Not only had Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, been backers of the project but so had the new secretary of transportation, Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois.