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UPDATE -- $7.7 Billion In Earmarks In 2009 Omnibus Spending Bill (updated 3/13/09)
Categories: Earmarks, Federal Budget, Headlines By TCS
Tags: budget, earmark disclosure, earmark reform, earmarks, fiscal year 2009, omnibus
Pub Date: Mar 13, 2009

March 13, 2009 Update: Version 5 is now available. (Download it here)  This version includes member state and party, and also allows for a partisan tabulation of who got how many earmarks.  We did not try to parse an earmark among parties; we only included pure Republican and pure Democrat earmarks in the totals. So an earmark sponsored by both a Republican and Democrat was not halved or included in either party’s total. This is so we are not trying to interpret the objective data, just presenting it as is.

In addition, we corrected some omitted House members.  Though the changes to most member totals weren't huge, it did give a fairly sizeable bump ($30 million) to Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI).  Other  numbers changed to a small degree.  If you have any questions as to what changed from the last version, let us know.  Sorry for any inconvienence this may cause.

March 10, 2009 Update: Version 4 is now available. This version adds state-by-state data and per capita earmark numbers.  In addition, twenty Financial Services earmarks have been added.  There was a page missing in the original version of the bill that Congress released, so we had to wait until it was available.  The member numbers have also been updated where needed.

March 5, 2009 Update: Version 3 has now hit the streets, with one major addition.  This includes a breakdown of results by House member.  In addition, more small textual changes were made, and you'll notice an upward change in Sen. Brownback's numbers.

March 4, 2009 Update: Version 2 of the database is now available.  No major changes, but some small fixes were made to some of the state information, and a small change to Sen. Alexander's earmark totals.

**Originally posted February 24, 2009

Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) has been going through the omnibus to pull together a total number of earmarks and dollar amount. TCS found 8,570 disclosed earmarks worth $7.7 billion. When you add the $6.6 billion in disclosed earmarks that were in the three FY09 spending bills that passed in the fall (Defense, DHS, MilCon/VA) you end up with $14.3 billion worth of disclosed earmarks in FY09. The apples-to-apples comparison from 2008 yielded $14.8 billion, so there was a $500 million reduction in disclosed earmarks between FY08 and FY09. Click here for the preliminary analysis.

A big disparity between TCS’s number and the Committee number ($3.8 billion) is that the Appropriations Committee chooses not to include earmarks from project-based accounts in their totals, despite the fact that they were not requested by the administration. For example, the Corps of Engineers budget is made up of hundreds of projects that add up to the agency total. These numbers are not included in the committee totals or in their reduction predictions. In addition, the committee ascribes many operations and maintenance projects to the President when they were not actually requested as part of the FY09 budget.

Finally, we can only provide numbers for disclosed earmarks. These are the projects with a member’s name next to them. However, TCS has been doing earmark analysis for many years and we found a lot of “looks like earmark, talks like an earmark” provisions in the bill that we tally as “undisclosed” earmarks, so our totals are apple-to-apple with previous years.  For instance, last year TCS found billions ($3.5B) of undisclosed earmarks to go with the earmarks disclosed by the committees ($14.8B). This number will take a lot more digging to figure out. But we are on it.

FY2009 Omnibus Earmarks - Version 5

(if you would like previous versions of the database, please contact us at info@taxpayer.net)

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Examples of Earmarks in the Omnibus

$713,625 Woody Biomass at SUNY-ESF. Walsh and Schumer sponsors

$951,500 Sustainable Las Vegas. Berkeley and Reid sponsors.

$24,000 A+ for Abstinence. Specter is sponsor.

$300,000 Montana World Trade Center. Rehberg sponsor.

$950,000 Myrtle Beach International Trade and Convention Center. Graham sponsor.

$200,000 Oil Region Alliance. Peterson sponsor.

$190,000 Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY for digitizing and editing the Cody collection. Barbara Cubin is the sponsor

$143,000 Las Vegas Natural History Museum, Las Vegas, NV, to expand natural history education programs. Sponsored by Harry Reid

$238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society, Honolulu, HI, for educational programs. Sen. Daniel Inouye is the sponsor.

$381,000 for Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York, NY for music education programs. Jerrold Nadler is the sponsor.

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Appropriations Resources

**TCS staff are reading through the omnibus bill to identify all earmarks (undisclosed as well as disclosed).  We will post our earmark databases as they are completed.

AGRICULTURE
Bill Report (5MB)  |  Earmark Disclosure List (2.7MB)

COMMERCE/JUSTICE/SCIENCE
Bill Report (13.4MB)  |  Earmark Disclosure List (8.5MB)

DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS
Bill Report (19MB) |  Earmark Disclosure List (3MB)

ENERGY AND WATER
Bill Report (19.2MB)  |  Earmark Disclosure List (9.8MB)

FINANCIAL SERVICES
Bill Report (4..4MB)  |  Earmark Disclosure List (1MB)

HOMELAND SECURITY
Bill Report (19MB)  |  Earmark Disclosure List

INTERIOR AND ENVIRONMENT
Bill Report (13.4MB)  |  Earmark Disclosure List (3MB)

LABOR/HHS/EDUCATION
Bill Report_Pt 1 (11MB)  |  Bill Report Pt 2  (14 MB)  |  Earmark Disclosure List (13.5MB)

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH
Bill Report  |  Earmark Disclosure List

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND VETERANS AFFAIRS
Bill Report (19MB) |  Earmark Disclosure List (1MB)

STATE AND FOREIGN OPERATIONS
Bill Report (2MB) | No Disclosed Earmarks

TRANSPORTATION/HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Bill Report (15.7MB) |  Earmark Disclosure List (7MB)

 
  


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