'They can still go to events. They can still put up banners,' Rep. Kingston said. DOD's NASCAR spending hits wall

NASCAR suffered a rare loss in Congress Thursday — and worst yet, it came at the hands of a Republican from Georgia.

Rep. Jack Kingston tipped the scales in the House Appropriations Committee, putting some Southern moxie behind what had been a losing cause until now: Rep. Betty McCollum’s campaign to end the Pentagon’s practice of spending tens of millions every year on costly motor sport and fishing sponsorships to promote recruitment.


( Also on POLITICO: The race for NASCAR votes)

NASCAR commands the lion’s share of these expenditures, estimated at $80 million in 2012 altogether. And new estimates from the National Guard show that more than $135 million has been spent over the past five years just for the Guard’s sponsorship and branding efforts through Hendricks Motorsports in North Carolina and the racing team of star driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Just a year ago, McCollum (D-Minn.) lost 281-148 on the House floor, with only 30 Republicans backing her. But one of them was Kingston, who came back this spring as her lead sponsor and prevailed Thursday on a voice vote in the Republican-controlled committee.

“The old question always in politics is, ‘If not here, where, if not now, when, if not us, who?’” Kingston told his colleagues. “I am a conservative Republican. I’m very pro-military, but at some point, we have to get in the habit of cutting programs that are less efficient, less effective. … Would you still spend this money if it was you?”

“They can still go to events. They can still put up banners. They can be all over the high school sporting events,” he said of the recruitment campaigns. “But $20 million for one NASCAR race (team)? Have we lost our minds?”

“I’d say this is a great place to send a signal.”

His fellow Georgian, Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop, remained unconvinced, spinning his own picture of modern Sergeant York’s being uncovered at the speedways.

“NASCAR is big and particularly in rural communities,” Bishop said. “We’ve got to go where the potential recruits are. These youngsters who work on the tractors … who are the mechanics who can take those skills to the military who hunt, who fish, who become expert marksmen because they’re accustomed to hunting in the woods. I think we need to target those folks.”

McCollum, who has walked a lonely path until now, seemed happy to play second fiddle, thanking Kingston for his “bipartisan support.”

Just Wednesday night, the Republican-controlled House Rules Committee had sided with NASCAR, denying McCollum the chance to offer a similar amendment on the pending defense authorization bill on the House floor. But there she was Thursday with the checkered flag— winning a foothold on the Pentagon’s $608.2 billion budget for 2013.

“Our nation is facing a fiscal crisis,” McCollum said. “We need to bring balance back to our budgeting but the Pentagon can’t sacrifice one more dime?”

Kingston hammered home the argument that the sponsorships were costly recruitment tools — at a time when the Army and Marines must reduce their troop strength. And having just cut poverty programs last week to help pay for the military budget, some House Republicans were clearly looking for an opportunity to swing the other way.

The Georgia Republican said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who chairs the conservative Republican Study Committee, has already volunteered to jump in as a cosponsor if anyone attempts to strike the amendment when the appropriations bill hits the House floor next month. But minutes after the vote, he got a call from a lobbyist friend who turned out to be representing NASCAR.

“‘What are you doing?’ he asked,” Kingston laughed. “It goes to show this isn’t just plain purity in terms of recruitment. There’s some money involved.”

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