Taxpayers for Common Sense posted a very useful and in some ways surprising look at $3,000,000,000 in Congressional Earmarks attached to a $459,600,000,000 defense appropriation bill (not the entire defense budget). This amount is $40,000,000,000 more than last year’s authorization (nice). Wisconsin congressional earmarks are lead by long time incumbent David Obey with $42,000,000, who also conveniently serves as Chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Obey’s earmark methods have been criticized recently: John Solomon & Jeffrey Birnbaum writing in the Washington Post:
Democrats had complained bitterly in recent years that Republicans routinely slipped multimillion-dollar pet projects into spending bills at the end of the legislative process, preventing any chance for serious public scrutiny. Now Democrats are poised to do the same.
“I don’t give a damn if people criticize me or not,” Obey said.
Obey’s spokeswoman, Kirstin Brost, said his intention is not to keep the projects secret. Rather, she said, so many requests for spending were made to the appropriations panel — more than 30,000 this year — that its staff has been unable to study them and decide their validity.
Here’s a list of all earmarks (.xls file) attached to this defense bill. Wisconsin delegation earmarks:
- David Obey 42,000,000 (Unique ID Column 837, 854, 874, 921, 947, 1053, 1093, 1165)
- Tammy Baldwin $7,500,000 (Unique Id Column 56, 740, 1334)
- Steve Kagen $5,000,000 (Unique ID 496, 561, 562)
- Ron Kind $4,000,000 (Unique Id 1033 and 1083)
- Tom Petri $4,000,000 (Unique Id 782)
- Gwen Moore $2,000,000 (Unique Id 575, 898, 978 and 1151)
- Paul Ryan $0.00
- Jim Sensenbrenner $0.00 (shocking)
HouseDefenseEarmarks.xls. Congress’s approval ratings (3%) are far below the President’s (24%), which isn’t saying much (Zogby Poll)
Much more on local earmarks, here [RSS Feed on earmarks]
