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Political Contributions & Conflicts of Interest Taint U.S. Ag Policies

Despite our nation’s $16.8 trillion debt and record deficits, agricultural lobbyists continue to fearlessly campaign for more subsidies...

Rural Energy for America Program Fact Sheet

The Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) was created in the 2008 farm bill to provide federal grants and loans to renewable energy...

Political Footprint of the Corn Ethanol Lobby

The federal government has in one form or another provided lucrative subsidies to the corn ethanol industry for more than 30 years,...

Analysis of Selected Sections of S. 601, Water Resources Development Act of 2013

The Senate's Environment and Public Works committee is taking up a water project bill that could cost taxpayers billions....

Crop Insurance Administrative Policy Changes

Several administrative changes could be implemented to reduce taxpayer costs and limit the unintended consequences of federal crop insurance. ...

Haves and Have-Nots in Federal Crop Insurance

Federally subsidized crop insurance has become the largest taxpayer support for agriculture. But not all parts of the agriculture...

Sliding Past Sequestration: $2 Trillion in Common Sense Cuts to Avoid the Fiscal Cliff

In the summer of 2011, Congress sent the President a bill that acknowledged failure. Instead of swallowing hard and coming up with...

Record Drought Results in Record Profit

Special interests are always looking for a silver lining. This year, it’s the farm lobby and sympathetic politicians shamelessly taking...

Backdoor Earmarks? Slush-y Funds in the Corps of Engineers Budget

(February 8, 2012 | 3:00 p.m.) Below is a chart detailing the number of projects that receive funding in the Corps 2012 Work Plan that...

Super Cuts for the Super Committee

Taxpayers for Common Sense has been working hard to meet the challenge of that the so-called Super Committee is facing - $1.2-1.5...

Green Scissors 2011

Taxpayers for Common Sense joined environmental, consumer watchdog, and free-market groups today to release Green Scissors 2011, which...

No Deal on Ethanol for Taxpayers

A small group Senators are attempting to snatch fiscal defeat from the jaws of taxpayer victory on ethanol subsidies. Last month the...

Earmark Terms Glossary

Categories of Earmarks Disclosed Lawmaker: Earmarks Earmarks that appear in the explanatory statement of an appropriations bill for...

Big Oil, Big Corn: An in-depth look at the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit

Big Oil, Big Corn: An in-depth look at the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit Corn has been subsidized since the 1930s, but it was...

Subsidy Gusher: Taxpayers Stuck With Massive Subsidies While Oil and Gas Profits Soar

There are a couple of basic truths about oil and gas companies today--they are highly profitable, heavily subsidized, and well-connected...

Ongoing TCS Analysis of the FY2012 Budget Proposal

The FY2012 Presidential Budget Request was released this morning. TCS staff will be posting relevant documents and analysis as we digest...

Common Sense Cuts—$900 billion in savings over 10 years

The time has come for Congress to begin a serious discussion about how it is going to correct the current budgetary path into deeper and...

TCS Recommended Budget Cuts for the 112th Congress

The time has come for Congress to begin a serious discussion about how it is going to correct the current budgetary path into deeper and...

FY2011 Omnibus Appropriations Earmark Database

(Originally Posted 12/17/2010) Taxpayers for Common Sense has completed an initial database of the 6,706 earmarks worth $8.3 billion...

TCS Releases Database of FY11 Earmark Requests

Taxpayers for Common Sense, WashingtonWatch.com, and Taxpayers Against Earmarks teamed together to develop a database of all fiscal year 2011 earmark requests....

TCS Preliminary Earmark Analysis for FY 2011

Originally Posted 10/19/2010: The FY2011 budget is a mess. Congress has not finished a single spending bill. The House has approved...

Election Gives Big-Spending Congressional Committees New Look

The Armed Services Committees are not the only Congressional bodies to see their memberships upended by the midterm elections. The...

FutureGen: Massive Clean Coal Project Changes Track, Still Securing $1 Billion Earmarked in the Stimulus

Today, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that the plan to build “FutureGen” a massive commercial “clean coal” facility in Mattoon,...

UPDATE: Earmarks in Defense Authorization Bill

(June 4, 2010) This week’s Memorial Day Congressional recess gave us a chance to peer under the lid of the House defense authorization...

Exploring the Relationship Between Earmarks and Campaign Contributions

Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Center for Responsive Politics have joined to release a comprehensive database that links campaign...

FY10 Omnibus Disclosed Earmark Numbers

Preliminary disclosed earmark totals for the FY10 Omnibus: Transportation/HUD: 1481 worth $1.207...

UPDATE: President Signs Defense Authorization Bill with $4 billion in Earmarks

(October 30) President Obama signed a $680 billion defense authorization bill this week—the largest such bill ever—with a declaration...

Complete Database of House and Senate Earmark Requests

After searching all 99 senate websites (remember the Coleman/Franken Minnesota race is still unresolved), we now have a complete database...

Visclosky FY08 & FY09 PMA Client Earmarks

The FBI has subpoenaed various records and documents from Rep. Visclosky’s (D-IN) offices in relation to the previously raided PMA Group...

Database of FY2010 Earmark Requests

Update (May 7, 2009):  It has now been just over a month since the deadline for members to disclose on their websites all FY2010 earmark...

President Signs Earmark-Laden Spending Bill

President George W. Bush signed a massive year-end spending bill late Tuesday, just hours before a new fiscal year began. The "Minibus"...

Stevens Tops FY2009 Earmark Heap

As Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) sat today in a federal courthouse while jurors were chosen in the federal trial against him, he received at...

2,321 Earmarks worth $6.6 Billion in Minibus Legislation

After a bit of speed reading, TCS staff came up with earmark totals for the CR/Def/DHS/MilCon bill that was released 13 hours ago. These...

Sample of Earmarks in the FY09 Minibus

It’s slow going looking through the earmarks, but here’s a few – some are repeat customers and some are rookie earmarks. More to...

House Releases Homeland Security Earmark Letters

The House Appropriations Committee has just released the earmark request letters for the 2009 Department of Homeland Security...

FY2009 Appropriations Bills: TCS Analyses and Earmark Databases

The following are links to TCS's analysis and database for each of the FY09 appropriations bills. (Note: With the exception of House...

Senate Adds $5.2 Billion in Earmarks to Defense Authorization Bill

The Senate is expected to pass the 2009 Defense Authorization Bill sometime tonight, but to do so they will have to resolve a raucous...

Sen. Obama (D-IL) Requested $860.6 million in earmarks FY2006-FY2008

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) requested 326 projects worth $860.6 million between FY2006 and FY2008, according to a Taxpayers for Common Sense...

Senate Energy and Water Earmark Total Nearly Identical to Last Year

The Senate Appropriations Committee’s FY2009 Energy and Water appropriations bill contains 1,480 earmarks worth $3.50 billion (click here...

Nearly $200 million in Agriculture Earmarks in Senate Bill

The Senate Appropriations Committee included 307 earmarks worth about $197.2 million in the Fiscal Year 2009 Agriculture Appropriations...

House Earmarks $721 Million in Military Construction Appropriations Bill

The House of Representative today passed a bill to fund Military Construction and Veterans Affairs programs in fiscal year 2009 contains...

Senate Doubles House Take of Financial Services Earmarks

The FY 2009 Senate Financial Services Appropriations bill contains 90 earmarks worth $221.3 million (click here to view the database)....

Earmarks for Energy and Water Projects Double in House Legislation

The FY 2009 House Energy and Water Appropriations bill contains 1,465 congressional earmarks for a total cost of more than $3.1 billion...

Cost of Senate Labor-HHS Earmarks Increase Significantly

The FY 2009 Senate Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations bill contains 942 earmarks for a total cost of more than $847...

Shelby, Milkulski Secure 25% of Earmarks on CJS Spending Bill

The FY 2009 Senate Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) appropriations bill contains 552 earmarks worth $471.4 million, according to an...

House Commerce Justice Science Spending Bill: 1,126 Earmarks, $442,562,000

The FY 2009 House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations bill contains 1,126 earmarks worth $442,562,000. That is a decrease of 13...

House Labor-HHS Spending Bill: 1,371 Earmarks, $619 Million

The FY 2009 House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill contains 1371 earmarks for a total cost of $619,187,000. The number of projects...

$57 million in earmarks in the House 2009 Financial Services spending bill

The 2009 House Financial Services Appropriations bill contains 197 earmarks for a total of $57 million (click here to see the database)....

$197 Million in Homeland Security Earmarks in Senate Spending Bill

The Senate version of the 2009 Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill includes 19 congressional earmarks for a total of...

House Defense Authorization Earmarks Jump From Last Year

A bill recently passed by the House increases the number of Defense Authorization earmarks by more than 20% from last year, according to...

Database of Congressional Earmarks for FY2008

**First posted Feb. 14, 2008** Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) staff and interns have devoted thousands of hours to researching,...

Ending the Earmark ATM: Despite Reforms, Earmarks Continue to Thrive

Congress disclosed 11,234 earmarks worth $14.8 billion in this year’s spending bills. An additional $3.5 billion worth of earmarks were...

Transportation Committee Discloses New Earmarks

The earmark disclosure debutantes are making their way to the floor today in the technical correction bill for SAFETEA-LU (H.R....

Taxpayers for Common Sense Releases New Earmark Database

Despite reform, new database finds that Congress hasn’t lost its appetite for pork Washington, D.C. – Congress has cut earmarks by 23...

50 Defense Earmarks Not Disclosed by House Defense Committe

When the House of Representatives passed new rules just a few days into the new Congress requiring lawmakers to disclose the earmarks...

Earmark Transparency One Step Closer

Tonight, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment to the ethics bill to bring earmarks out of the shadowy corridors of the capitol and...

Nuclear Subsidies in 2005 Energy Bill

For more than a half century the federal government has provided billions in handouts to the nuclear power industry. And today the...

Analysis of Senate Energy Bill of 2003

As the Senate brings their energy policy legislation to the floor this week, it is clear that their bill is as filled with perks for...

Analysis HR6 - Energy Policy Act of 2003

The current 768 page, 5 inch thick energy legislation is fueled by pork and will do very little to reduce energy prices or increase...

Passing the Buck

How the Mining Industry Used Outdated Rules to Pass Environmental Cleanup Costs to Taxpayers...

Syria: Excuse 535 To Not Cut the Deficit

Volume XVIII No. 37 Possible action in Syria has become the most recent excuse du jour for Pentagon boosters...