Our earmark data-collection project has been a smashing success, and our intrepid earmark hunters have put over 34,000 earmark requests into the database.
Less than 60 members of Congress and senators remain, but the going is getting tough. Why? Because some disclosures were in the worst possible format: scanned PDFs. It’s a huge chore to make [...]
We’re at a whopping 30,000 earmark requests in our database – just crossed over that number tonight – and one of our intrepid earmark hunters finally entered the requests of Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. That means we have both Appropriations chairmen.
So let’s look at the people who [...]
As we get closer and closer to finishing our earmarks project, there are interesting and fun ways to select whose earmarks we go after next.
How about the people who move the money around: Appropriators! These are the folks who sit on the committees that make the actual spending decisions.
The earmark requests of several appropriators aren’t [...]
The nitty-gritty of the fiscal year 2010 spending process is getting under way. By the beginning of the new fiscal year October 1st, Congress is supposed to pass twelve appropriations bills, spending the money in the U.S. treasury on all the operations of the government for the year.
Last week, the House passed the H.R. [...]
Yesterday, the House and Senate both approved a final version of the budget for fiscal year 2010, which begins on October 1st.
The deadline for completing the budget was April 15th, as we noted in the recent post “Behind on the Budget.”
Now the budget will be divided up into amounts that each appropriations subcommittee gets to [...]
The Hill reports that Members of Congress who failed to disclose their earmark requests as required by new rules in the House will still get their goodies.
Members who failed to disclose their earmarks as required by the April 4 deadline should have them rejected out of hand. But Congress makes the rules, and Congress can [...]
UPDATE: Here is the latest list of “wanted” earmarks in our earmark hunting contest.
(Updated July 19, 2009 to include Senate reforms and links)
In March, the House Appropriations Committee announced reforms to the earmark process, which members of Congress use to designate federal funds for projects in their districts.
The reform requires members to post their earmark [...]
This past week, President Obama introduced his budget for fiscal year 2010. He proposes federal spending of just over $3.5 trillion. Unfortunately, the dollars he expects the government to bring in add up to just under $2.4 trillion, leaving a deficit of just under $1.2 trillion.
Let’s break those numbers down.
Under the new [...]
With the $500 billion omnibus spending bill racing through Congress this week, there is no better time to highlight the need for a transparent and regular appropriations process.
So a group of transparency advocates have put together a letter asking Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and Appropriations Committee Chairman Obey (D-WI) to provide “timely and easily-accessible disclosure of [...]
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee posted a copy of the economic stimulus bill, called the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,” online. Though it hasn’t been officially introduced yet, in a statement released Thursday, the committee said the bill would be considered by Congress within the next two weeks.
The bill’s reported tally of [...]