CAGW has been drilling down into the 7 appropriations bills that were recently reported out of the committees on the House side to find out what taxpayers can expect to see when it comes to earmarks in the fiscal year 2009 budget.

You can view a roundup of what we found so far here. This contains links to CAGW Pork Alerts and the House earmark lists in PDF form.

The picture doesn’t look very sunny for taxpayers. Where CAGW was able to make apples to apples comparisons, there are increases in numbers of earmarks and the costs associated with them. In the House Labor/HHS bill, the number of earmarks were in nearly a steady state from FY 2008, but the dollar amount shot up dramatically. In total, there are 1,370 earmarks worth a staggering $618.8 million of taxpayer money. This represents a 5 percent increase in number of projects, but a whopping 122 percent increase in dollar amounts over the FY 2008 version, which had 1,305 earmarks costing $277.9 million. The top three porkers were Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), $168.5 million; Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), $161.3 million; and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), $148.5 million.

The House Financial Services Approps bill went from having 226 earmarks worth $111 million in FY 2008 to having 247 earmarks worth $134.9 million, a 9.3 percent increase in projects and a 21.5 percent increase in dollar amounts.

For the House Commerce, Justice and Science Approps bill, CAGW excavated 1,123 projects at a cost of $409.8 million. The top five porkers are CJS Appropriations Subcommittee member Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) with $9.95 million; CJS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) with $9.7 million; CJS Appropriations Subcommittee member C.A “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-Md.); with $8 million; CJS Appropriations Subcommittee member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) with $7.9 million and House appropriator Ralph Regula (R-Ohio) with $7.7 million.

CAGW is plowing through two Senate Approps bills even as we speak. Check the website, www.cagw.org, for updates.

House Approps Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.) stated a few weeks ago that he expected to maintain earmarks at 2008 levels (at 11,600, still much too high!). That is not happening. Knowing that the Senate tends to lard up the spending bills with even more pork and that there a better then even chance that Congress will procrastinate and scramble to cram a lot of pork into a last-minute omnibus bill, CAGW suspects that taxpayers are going to be on the hook for much more pork-barrel spending than last year.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Politics .