House Pork-Barrel Train is Leaving the Station

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released a preliminary analysis of earmarks for six House Appropriations bills: Energy and Water; Labor and Health and Human Services; Military Construction; Financial Services; Interior, and Commerce, Justice Science. CAGW will be issuing more detailed pork alerts on these bills in the near future. The links below are to the entire list provided by the House Appropriations Committee. CAGW’s figures do not include items identified as “presidential” earmarks.

— Labor/HHS: For this year, CAGW calculated that there are 1,370 earmarks for a cost of $618.8 million. In fiscal year (FY) 2008, the House Labor/HHS bill contained 1,305 projects costing $277.9 million. Though the number of projects only increased by 5 percent, the dollar amount jumped by a whopping 122 percent.

— Military Construction: CAGW found 102 earmarks costing $621.3 million.

— Financial Services: There are 197 projects costing $57 million, which represents a 45 percent increase in projects and an 84 percent increase in dollar amounts from last year’s House bill.

— Interior: For FY 2009, CAGW has enumerated 247 projects for a cost of $134.9 million. That represents a 9.3 percent increase in projects and a 21.5 percent increase in dollar amount from last year. In FY 2008, there were 226 projects worth $111 million in the House bill.

— Commerce, Justice, Science: CAGW has documented 1,123 projects for a total cost of $409.8 million.

— Energy & Water: CAGW has documented 655 earmark projects for a cost of $821 million.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.