Earmarks near $15 billion
Earmarks near $15 billion

By The Associated Press Comments 3
Published: June 8, 2008

So much for trimming the pork.

The practice of decorating legislation with billions of dollars in pet projects and federal contracts is thriving on Capitol Hill — despite public outrage that helped flip control of Congress two years ago.

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More than 11,000 of those "earmarks,” worth nearly $15 billion in all, were slipped last year into legislation telling the government where to spend taxpayers' money this year, keeping them at the center of Washington's culture of money, influence and politics. Now comes an election-year encore.

An examination of many of those earmarks by The Associated Press and two dozen newspapers participating in a project sponsored by the Associated Press Managing Editors found much greater disclosure since 2006 but no end to what has become ingrained behavior in Congress.

Assisting the project were two nonprofit and nonpartisan watchdog organizations — the Sunlight Foundation and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Millions of the dollars support lobbying firms that help companies, universities, local governments and others secure what critics like Republican presidential candidate John McCain call pork-barrel spending. The law forbids using federal grants to lobby, but lobbyists do charge clients fees that often equal 10 percent of the largesse.

For all the outcry, most earmarks have much to commend them. Just because a lawmaker arranges a project for his home district doesn't mean it isn't worthy.

But many also go to causes or projects that, on the surface, don't appear all that necessary.

Congress disclosed 11,234 earmarks totaling $14.8 billion in bills covering government spending this year, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group. The White House puts the total at $18 billion, including the amounts that lawmakers added to what President Bush sought for specific projects.

A new earmarking cycle begins this month as the House and Senate Appropriations committees reveal spending bills for the 2009 budget year that starts Oct. 1.