I just received a huge 100+ page report from the always magnificent Representative Louise Slaughter that is almost certainly the most extensive and in-depth study of the Republican Culture of Corruption yet produced. Considering that the report is over 100 pages long and has over 600 pages of supporting documents, I have not yet had a chance to look through it yet. It won't be posted on the web until tomorrow, but I think the cover sheet I received with it should be more than enough to whet your appetite: Here it is:

Enclosed please find a PDF version of our report, America for Sale: The Cost of Republican Corruption, which explains how the corruption in Republican-controlled Washington is costing average Americans living outside the beltway bubble.  It shows how the harmful policies Republicans have passed into law over the past few years are the result of a corrupt process that gives "K Street Project" lobbyists more power to shape legislation than the legislators the people have elected to represent them in Washington.

The report will be released to the traditional medial tomorrow and will be up live on Leader Pelosi's website tomorrow.

We wanted you to have an exclusive PDF version which you can copy and paste out of.  I am also enclosing for you a document titled "Corruption Index," which has a list of names of all the GOP current and former House Members, current and former House Congressional Leaders, and current and former Bush Administration officials who have either a direct or indirect link/connections to this massive web of Republican corruption.  Here are some of the names from that list with references to page numbers of the report(...)

Our report clearly demonstrates that when the GOP Leaders in the House of Representatives allow Republican lobbyists to set the agenda and write the bills, the American people suffer the consequences.  While the special interests walk away with billions of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies, and federal contracts, Americans must live with the bad laws this system produces.  The political corruption we associate with now-notorious figures such as Duke Cunningham and Jack Abramoff comes at a very real cost to each and every one of us.

For the first time, this report tries to quantify the damage the Republican Congress and Bush White House have inflicted on our country.  Here are a few numbers to consider:

• 14.2 million American seniors (including millions of our sickest and most vulnerable seniors) are stuck in a complicated, expensive, and inefficient Medicare prescription drug program because the Republican Congress and the Bush Administration allowed lobbyists from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to design this program.

• 60 million American families who heat their homes with natural gas and 8 million families who heat with heating oil are paying higher bills this winter, even though the Republican Congress recently passed their "national energy plan" into law.  Although this plan gives the energy industry billions in new tax breaks and subsidies, it doesn't lower prices for consumers or make our country more energy independent.

• The 150,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Iraq may not have the equipment they need because of waste, fraud and cronyism by the Republican Congress and the Department of Defense.  While Halliburton and other companies with Republican connections get their contracts, our soldiers still don't have the body armor and armored vehicles they need to fight the war.

• 750,000 households in the Gulf regions are still displaced today, more than 5 months after Hurricane Katrina hit that region, at least in part because the political hacks the Bush Administration put in charge of crucial homeland security functions were not adequately prepared to prepare for or respond to this disaster.

• More than 10 million students and their families will have larger student loans to repay because House Republicans, led by new Majority Leader John Boehner working hand-in-hand with his commercial loan industry allies, cut $12 billion from the student loan program in the recent reconciliation bill and shifted the costs on to students and their families.

The entire report will be released tomorrow. In the extended entry, I have enclosed the list of Republicans implicated by the report.