Pig Book: Earmarks Are Down in 2010
Congressional earmarks are DOWN in 2010.
Yes, you read that correctly. Washington lawmakers actually requested 10.2 percent fewer earmarks in fiscal year 2010 than the year before, and the total tax dollars spent to fund those earmarks dropped 15.5 percent.
That's according to the 20th annual "Pig Book" released by Citizens Against Government Waste today in Washington.
What happened? Well, pork barrel spending is a time-honored tradition in Washington - a practice many lawmakers see as a way to curry favor with voters and interest groups in their home states. But with anti-government spending sentiment sweeping the nation, it's suddenly become politically advantageous to refuse earmarks.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has been a kind of lone ranger on this issue for years, has been joined by 46 other members of Congress who say they will not request earmarks. House Democrats recently announced they would stop seeking earmarks for for-profit companies. Not to be outdone, House Republicans decided to pursue a one-year moratorium on all earmarks.
Now, that doesn't mean that earmarks - those projects that get slipped into legislation to sweeten the pot for lawmakers - are going to disappear entirely anytime soon. There were still 9,129 earmarks in Fiscal Year 2010 totaling $16.5 million. And the Senate has shown little interest in following the House's lead when it comes to shunning earmarks.
Here are some of the earmarks that made it into legislation this year:
- $5 million for the Presidio Heritage Center in California
- $2.5 million for potato pest management and research
- $1.4 million to study mosquito trapping in Florida
- $1 million for Portsmouth Music Hall in New Hampshire
- $800,000 for catfish genome mapping in Alabama
- $206,000 for wool research in Montana, Texas and Wyoming
CBS Evening News: Who Brought Home the Bacon
Nancy Cordes is CBS News' Congressional Correspondent.
