Did 'backroom deal' sway Stupak? He blasts GOP claim

Did 'backroom deal' sway Stupak? He blasts GOP claim Republicans in Washington complained today of an “apparent backroom deal” worth $726,000 to three airports in U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak’s district, suggesting the funding may have somehow swayed his vote for health care reform legislation. Problem is,Tarps the same round of improvement grants — worth millions of dollars to some airports – went to facilities all over the nation, including those in districts of some of the staunchest opponents to the reform bill.

Stupak’s office also noted today that the round of grants for airports in the 1st congressional district in Michigan — the second largest congressional district east of the Mississippi — were less than those made there the year before.

“It’s absurd to think I would change my vote for a tow truck and a fence to keep deer from walking onto the runway of an airport in my district,” Stupak said.

Republican antipathy toward Stupak, a Democratic from Menominee on the Upper Peninsula, has been growing since Sunday, when he went from a nay vote to a yea one on health care reform. He and a group of other abortion opponents agreed to vote for the bill once President Barack Obama committed to an executive order saying no federal funding would go to pay for abortions.

Today, however, the National Republican Congressional TarpsCommittee issued a release noting that three airports in Stupak’s district were awarded grants by the Obama administration “just two days before a vote” on health care reform.

“Will Stupak come clean about this apparent backroom deal for his vote?” the release asked.

Providing the phone number to Stupak’s office in Alpena, the NRCC release also questioned why the airports — Alpena County Regional Airport, Delta County Airport and Chippewa County International Airport — should qualify for funding at all.

But the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Improvement Fund awards grants all over the country, including to small airports. Alpena may have had only 7,519 enplanements in 2008 — the most recent year for which data was available — but that’s more than the 2,870 at Canyonlands Field in Moab, TarpsUtah, which received $675,000 to buy firefighting equipment.