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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Pork now 'earmarks' - 11,000 of them
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| Contributor | kal |
| Last Edited | kal Jun 06, 2008 10:08pm |
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| Category | General |
| News Date | Saturday, June 7, 2008 04:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | So much for trimming the pork.
The practice of decorating legislation with billions of dollars in pet projects and federal contracts is still thriving on Capitol Hill - despite public outrage that helped flip control of Congress two years ago.
More than 11,000 of those "earmarks," worth nearly $15 billion in all, were slipped into legislation telling the government where to spend taxpayers' money this year, keeping the issue at the center of Washington's culture of money, influence and politics. Now comes an election-year encore.
It's a pay-to-play sandbox where waste and abuse often obscure the good that earmarks can do.
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.
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