Web site keeps tabs on pork barrel politics

Publication: Tennessean.com

Jennifer Brooks
November 6, 2007

For everyone who has ever wondered just how Congress is spending your tax dollars, wonder no more.

Earmarkwatch.org, a database operated by Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Sunlight Foundation, is keeping tabs on every pork barrel project tucked away in the 2009 spending bills.

These multi-billion dollar appropriation bills fund operations for every federal agency in the coming fiscal year. But in between the money the agencies actually requested to meet payroll, buy equipment and fund programs are billions of dollars in unrequested money added to the bill by lawmakers seeking to fund special projects back in their home districts.

The Web site allows visitors to sift through the spending bills as they come up in the House and Senate, searching for special projects by state and by the name of the sponsors who added them to the bill.

Although Democrats pledged to reduce the number of such projects in this year's spending bills by 50 percent, that still leaves billions of dollars in special projects tacked on to each budget — what opponents call pork and what legislators defend as needed funds for their districts.

Tennessee representatives slipped 15 special projects worth a total of $33.8 million into the House defense appropriations bill.