The 2011 Earmark Request Database Is Here!
We promised that we’d be watching Congress — and we are.
In the culmination of an almost-year long project — jointly administered by Taxpayers Against Earmarks, Taxpayers for Common Sense and WashingtonWatch.com — all 39,294 earmark requests submitted by Members of Congress this year are now available for review by the American people. As Manu Raju notes in Politico, the “first-of-its-kind analysis” reveals that the politicians in Congress are proposing to spend “eye-popping” number of our tax dollars on special-interest earmarks.
Read the analysis here.
And if you are shocked by the number and dollar amount of the earmarks requested this year, imagine this possible earmark request: $48 billion from Congressman Emanuel Cleaver for Quality Day Campus, Inc., an ambiguous organization in Kansas City whose only presence on the web is on MySpace! Even more, by navigating to page 25 of this list of appropriations requests from Congressman Cleaver’s office, you’ll find that the request was actually too large to fit in the provided space! We excluded this dollar amount from the database because the Congressman’s office would not confirm that he actually submitted this as an official request to the House Appropriations Committee. According to Cleaver’s request list, the $48 billion is only for phase one of the mysterious project. We’ll wait with bated breath for phase two, which is rumored to include funds for, you know, the construction of an actual website.
This was a monumental task and we thank our friends and colleagues at Taxpayers for Common Sense and WashingtonWatch.com for a job well done.
Now it is up to you to tell Congress what you think of these requests.
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