WHO's WHO - WHAT's WHAT of EARMARKS (FYI)

[radfringe]

OMB WEBSITE
Earmarks --> http://www.earmarks.omb.gov/
What is an Earmark?

Earmarks are funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly manage funds. Congress includes earmarks in appropriation bills - the annual spending bills that Congress enacts to allocate discretionary spending - and also in authorization bills.

What Does the Earmarks Database Show?

This database provides more information on earmarks in one place than has ever been available through the Federal Government. It is part of an effort to bring greater accountability and transparency to Federal spending. This step is also consistent with changes in the House Rules and Senate legislation during the 110th Congress, which requires more disclosure for earmarks.

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Just did some random clicking and found this in less than a minute as an example of how easy/quickly earmarks can be found.

http://www.earmarks.omb.gov/2009-earmarks/earmark_343239.html

Agency: Department of Agriculture
Bureau: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
Account: Salaries and Expenses (12-1600)

Alligator Health LA

Year: 2009
Code: Mgt-OPS-C-WS-33
Status: Tracking
Description: To develop diagnostics, treatment and prevention for diseases, including West Nile Virus, infecting farm-raised reptiles.


Senate
Mary Landrieu, LA
David Vitter, LA
$74,000

Appropriations Statute - By Reference S. Report 110-426 (Agriculture and Rural Development) - Senate Full Committee Disease Prevention - The Committee recommendation includes $74,000 to develop diagnostics, treatment and prevention for diseases, including West Nile Virus, infecting farm-raised reptiles. Research has confirmed that reptiles are a major vector for West Nile Virus, and the spread of this disease appears to be escalating, posing a significant human health risk and a great economic cost to the farming industry.

[radfringe]

1. kick

[Louis-Emmanuel]

2. when it comes to earmarks, GOPers are hypocrites

They won't admit they request 40% of the total of earmarks.

[high density]

4. It's fun to search for names like "McConnell" and "Gregg" and see the hypocrisy first hand.

:crazy:

[camera obscura]

3. Thanks for this link.

[radfringe]

5. couple more places to bookmark

nothing on the new budget, but a good place to bookmark for the future:

The Congressional Pig Book is CAGW's --- http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_pigbook2008

annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. The 2008 Pig Book identified 11,610 projects at a cost of $17.2 billion in the 12 Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2008. A "pork" project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. To qualify as pork, a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed in 1991 by CAGW and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition.

.................................


Exposing Earmarks -- http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/exposingearmarks/
There were over 1,800 earmarks in the 109th Labor HHS Bill, and we wanted to know where they came from. A variety of people helped figure it out, by researching and posting in the comment section on this blog post.

In 2007, Sunlight Foundation teamed up with Taxpayers for Common Sense and launched EarmarkWatch, a site dedicated to exposing earmarks and their details. 2008 earmarks are currently available at EarmarkWatch and the 2009 earmarks will be available in the fall of 2008.

Lawmakers and their Earmarks for 2009 -- http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/earmarkdisclosures/2009/
Note: Some links to disclosures that members of Congress either posted to their sites or made to news organizations are no longer working. Some news organizations either remove content from their Web sites or change URLs, while lawmakers remove older press releases. Sunlight researchers are contacting lawmakers whose lists of earmark requests are no longer available at the addresses where we originally accessed them to get their lists; we will make them available online when we get them. We regret the inconvenience.

[radfringe]

6. EARMARKS - modest suggestions

yesterday, a co-worker blathered on about "earmarks" and "pork" - you could have run an audio of limbaugh side-by-side with him and wouldn't notice a difference.

so I asked him - if the Republicans were soooo upset by earmarks, why haven't they withdrawn their own earmarks from the budget? Of course the co-worker had no answer and went into ditto-heading another limbaugh blather.

This got me to thinking - how to address the issue of earmarks.

Some suggestions:

1. no earmarks are allowed to be added to a bill which are not related directly related to the bill. Example: An infrastructure bill to repair bridges can't have an earmark in it for promoting free-range chickens.

2. OPEN and TRANSPARENT disclosure of who requested the earmark. There are several sites which track earmarks but it takes some digging to find out who requested what. there's an OMB page dealing with earmarks, but it doesn't specifically list who requested the earmark. If a congress critter wants $X for an earmark - their name should be on it and we should be able to know who they are.

3. If a congress-critter objects to $x for a particular earmark, they should be willing to withdraw an equal $x for their earmark. (Double or nothing rule.) If repubs objects to $50k to study med-fly mating rituals, the repubs would with draw $50k worth of their own earmarks - same would apply to Dems.

4. No earmarks in budget, supplementals, or any other bill. Earmarks would be handled by it's own separate bill, complete with a listing of who asked for what and how much.

---------Remember if you hear someone on TV/Radio mentioning any/all of these - you saw it here first.