A government-watchdog group says the Democrat-led Congress last year broke a promise to slash pork spending and doled out $17.2 billion for pet projects, including $296 million in earmarks by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton — the top spender of the three presidential contenders.
“There was hope that the number and cost of earmarks would be cut in half. By any measure, that has not occurred,” said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), which yesterday released its annual “Pig Book” tally of pork spending.
Congress stuffed 11,610 projects into fiscal 2008 spending bills, the second-highest total ever and more than triple the number of projects in fiscal 2007. The $17.2 billion spent reflected a 30 percent increase over the previous year’s $13.2 billion expenditure, according to the “Pig Book.”
The projects include $1.9 million for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service, named for Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel, New York Democrat, who requested the earmark; $460,752 for hops research related to beer making; $188,000 for the Lobster Institute in Maine; and $148,950 for the Montana Sheep Institute.
The top three “porkers” identified in the “Pig Book” all were Republican members of the Senate Appropriations Committee: ranking member Thad Cochran of Mississippi with $892 million, Ted Stevens of Alaska with $469 million and Richard C. Shelby of Alabama with $465 million.
CAGW ranked Mrs. Clinton of New York the 13th top pork spender in the Senate, far outpacing Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama who ranked 28th and sent his home state of Illinois about $97 million in pork.
Mrs. Clinton’s 281 projects included $303,150 for a drug-rehabilitation program at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis Center in New York; $535,800 for police surveillance cameras in Buffalo, N.Y.; $585,000 for exhibits at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, N.Y.; and $492,000 for an urban research center and greenhouse in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, as usual secured no pork projects.
Mr. McCain said the group’s “Pig Book” is of critical importance for exposing wasteful spending in Washington.
“By shedding light on these egregious projects, they are helping to make Congress more accountable to the American people,” he said. “We have taken small steps in the fight against pork-barrel spending in calling for greater transparency, but Congress still has a long way to go to rectify the detrimental impact pork-barrel spending has on the budget process and on America’s fiscal strength.”
Democratic leaders challenged CAGW’s numbers, saying the group inflates the total by including every construction project on military bases that are requested by the president, every water-treatment plant or every airport air-traffic control tower — projects that belie a “pork” label.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, boasts a 43 percent reduction in money spent on earmarks — the process by which members slip pet projects into spending bills — since her party took control of Congress last year.
Democratic appropriators calculated that spending on earmarks went from $16.2 billion in fiscal 2006 to $9.2 billion in fiscal 2008.
They stressed that they barred earmarks in most of the fiscal 2007 spending bills, although $13.2 billion in pork was approved in the Defense and Homeland Security spending bills for fiscal 2007 before Democrats took control of Congress that year.
Mr. Schatz agreed that Democrats had cut pork spending by about 40 percent over fiscal 2006 levels, but he stood by his organization’s year-by-year analysis.
“The point we made is they had a chance to equal or reduce the number from last year,” Mr. Schatz said. “The nation seemed to survive without those earmarks [in fiscal 2007]. They could have done it again.”
TOP SPENDERS
The Democrat-led Congress last year broke a promise to slash pork spending and doled out $17.2 billion for pet projects, a government watchdog group said. The following are the top pork-barrel spenders in the Senate.
1. Sen. Thad Cochran, Mississippi Republican, $892.2 million
2. Sen. Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican, $469.4 million
3. Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican, $464.5 million
4. Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat, $458.5 million
5. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, $386 million
13. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, $296 million
28. Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, $97 million
0. Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, $0.0
Source: Citizens Against Government Waste
The Washington Times
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