Congressman Bobby Rush (D-IL) appears to have taken the saying “taking care of your flock” to another level. Rush, who is also an ordained minister at the Beloved Community Church in Englewood, Illinois, obtained a $305,500 earmark for his church in one of last year’s spending bills. In 2004, Rush started a social services portion of the church called the Beloved Community Family Services Inc. This is the entity that received an earmark in the FY2008 Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the social services portion of the Church works with “at risk children in the impoverished Englewood neighborhood.” What we found interesting from the Sun-Times story was that the Congressman couldn’t recall sponsoring an earmark for the Church. Well the disclosure letter here makes it pretty clear that he was the sponsor. He should also know that he sponsored the earmark, because both he and his wife sit on the board of directors for the non-profit.

TCS researchers took a gander at the earmarks in the 2008 spending bill and were able to confirm that he was the only sponsor.

There is no evidence that the Congressman financially benefitted from this earmark and the Congressman states in his disclosure letter “that neither I nor my spouse has any financial interest in this project.” However, the question of whether he has received financial compensation for his work as minister of the Beloved Community Church has still not been answered.