The Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) hit a homerun with a series of stories this weekend. Partnering with uber-investigators at the Sunlight Foundation and Taxpayers for Common Sense they took a comprehensive shot at the state of special interest earmarks in Congress.
We helped a little by providing the data and hours of hands on assistance to dozens of journalists traversing the wild word of federal earmarks. TCS provided technical expertise on researching earmarks to dozens of reporters from newspapers across the country to help tell the tale about money and politics and the corrupting and wasteful power of earmarks.
The 11,780 earmarks worth $18.3 billion were littered across the Fiscal Year 2008 spending bills. We gave them a few tips, and an easy to use excel database of the earmarks and member totals.
Previous research has shown that the Congress has a long way to go to bringing the earmarking problem under control. Earmarks are special interest provisions inserted by lawmakers into spending bills to send tax dollars to specific favored companies, projects or programs. The stories revealed that lawmakers still have a long way to go.
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