Omnibus Bill Earmarks: The Database
As we all know now, when the Senate voted to retain their earmark power, they weren’t fooling around. They packed billions in earmarks into the omnibus spending bill even though the nation’s fiscal situation is precarious, and in spite of November’s vote to knock off the spending shenanigans.
Let’s turn the tables and engage in a little crowdsourcing. Sen. Tom Coburn’s office has posted the entire list of earmarks in the Senate’s $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill. All 6,715 line items are here — items like a cool million for broadband expansion in Vermont. $400,000 to create a “research park” in Florida. Millions in foreclosure modifications in several states. $200,000 for “streetscaping” in North Castle, NY. $500,000 for “streetscaping” in Indiana. $100,000 for “construction of a trail” in Pennsylvania. $250,000 for a lake trail in Texas. All of this and more, totaling about $8 billion, is in the database linked on this page.
So here’s where the crowdsourcing comes in. Take a look at the database, find your state, and if you happen to live near any of these pork projects, find out what you can about them. Get comment from your local senator’s office if you can. Check the local media for stories about it. Post what you find out either here in the comments, or on your own blog, and link it here in comments. Let’s turn up the heat on these bipartisan porkers.
Update: There are a couple of good twitter tags to follow on the earmarks, #omnibus and #earmarks.
“Crowdsourcing” I’ve thought for a while that this is what should be taking place within every local, state and federal governments. Citizens need to be combing through the budgets and expenditures at every level and post or print their findings to the public. They should also start tracking red flagged programs, agencies, etc. and do some investigative reporting. Some local medias seem to be doing a good job at this, but their resources are limited, however, citizens can bring stories to their attention.
We the people need to start rolling up our sleeves and expose the waste, fraud and inefficiencies of governments everywhere. We have to start demanding accountability and “crowdsourcing” seems to be the best method towards that end.
Of note: Here in West Michigan, yes THAT Michigan where a mass exodous of citizens are heading south, east, west as fast as they can this time never to return. Anyhow, Here in West Michigan in between Kalazmazoo and Grand Rapids this summer I observed with amazement as signs went up proclaiming a new project financed by the Amercican Recovery and Re-investment Act.
It is a bike trail that runs for maybe 5 or 6 miles north of Kalamazoo beside a road, a road that I suppose you could bike or walk on if you wanted to, but I guess someone thought a trail would be neater than just biking on a little traveled road and I am sure that ‘safety first’ was on this someone’s mind.
I don’t want to come off as a grump or a party pooper, I mean I like to bike and walk with the best of them, but still this project wouldn’t bother me so much if:
1. if we didn’t already have lots of biking/walking trails in the area.
2. if it ran through a forest or along a river, but no it runs along a rather average not so wide asphalt road not that heavily traveled and of which not that many people even know about or so I think as it is not heavily traveled, did I already say that?
3. if the state and citizens of Michigan weren’t screaming bloody murder about the condition of roads, bridges, inability to find funds for cleaning roads in the winter, road kill pick up cut backs, etc.
4. if in traveling this road beside the trail almost daily I saw throngs of people enjoying this trail along the road I would get it. But I have maybe seen at any one time a total of two people walking on the trail and once I saw a biker (One of those Hybrid bikes I’m guessing, looked sharp). It is easy to spot people because as noted the trail runs along the road mostly about 6 to 20 feet off the road, pretty easy to witness the traffic on the trail of which there is none. Maybe that will change, but I know I will be surprised yet a little bit happier if it does change.
5. if this trail went somewhere. It doesn’t. I’d like to think of it as the trail (that starts and ends) to nowhere. Sort of like the American Recovery and Redistribution… err… I mean Reinvestment Act.
6. I’d love to meet the people who thought this one up, I mean in one of the worst economies in my memory (I’m 61) this is the best we can do. WOW
Seriously we need to rethink these pork projects. This is nuts.
Anyway I’ll probably throw the bike on the back of the car and take a ride down the trail for the heckuvit when spring gets here. Then there might be three people at once on the trail.
Oh forgot, most of this trail runs, from what I can observe, on private land, so I presume the owners netted some profits for allowing the developers to churn their dirt and drop some bridges and asphalt on the trail. Good for them, glad I could help out. Good looking trail and the signs are neat too.
Thank You
Did the sign have that silly “o” or zero logo on it?
The U.S. Army didn’t think it worth it to spend $2 million on video games at Fort Dix, but Senators Lautenberg and Menendez know better. They sure look like fun. (Virtual Interactive Combat Environment for the NJ ARNG)
Being from Kansas, I was especially interested in earmarks from my voices in Congress. It seems #96, Brownback – KS, is actually legitimate. There is a tremendous amount of waste from agricultural by-products, i.e. corn stalks, leaves, etc. In fact, Kansas high schools debated this exact subject last year. If we can convert that to energy, at the least, we should experiment. I wish it hadn’t been included in this legislation, but it is legitimate.
Why can’t the corporations who will make money off the energy fund the R&D?
That was the first thing I noticed in scrolling through the list, though not in the same way. There’s a couple hundred grand here or there, then you get to Brownback’s earmarks, and they’re $2 million a pop. What the hell?
Why does the Deleware River need to be deeper? I haven’t heard about barges running aground in Philly. Why is the entire country paying for it?
Utah’s Pork, mostly courtesy of Bob “Cry Baby” Bennett.
I would love to look through Coburn’s database, but it seems to require Excel 2007 to open.
Download the free Excel viewer from Microsoft.
The free OpenOffice.org program can open the file as well.
Or Openoffice
Crowdsourcing earmarks is a great idea, but there are so many earmarks to look through on the spreadsheet! The size of the spreadsheet alone is a deterrent, and the pro-earmark crowd is probably betting that this will deter people from looking.
So, here is a modest suggestion for Tom Coburn’s office: Please make the earmarks easily searchable by state or by a sponsoring Senator’s name; that way, people can much more easily find what matters to them.
This shouldn’t be too hard, an office intern can add an extra column with the corresponding state’s name in one cell for each earmark and then someone with Excel experience can create a search function.
The database is easily searchable in Excel:
Edit > Find > enter search term – a city name will work best > Find All or Find Next
In scanning the spreadsheet – what percentage of house sponsors are in fact recent losers of elections? Chet Edwards of Texas, lost Tx 17th – is all over this sheet. Is this a parting gift, or setting the table for 2012 campaign???
Item 22 on the spreadsheet – Northwest Center for Small Fruits, Corvallis, OR http://www.nwsmallfruits.org
This is a research consortion of universities in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho plus the USDA. The mission of the Northwest Center for Small Fruits Research is to enhance the sustainability and profitability of the berry, grape and wine industries through research and dissemination of information.
These folks do good work, but as a research facility, they need to compete for research funds through the normal competitive process like everyone else. This is just plain pork.
What reader do I need to read the file? My computer rolled over and died when it saw that. Laugh if you will but some help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks yall -
You can get Open Office for free and it will open and allow you to manipulate this XLS file.
Try http://www.openoffice.org/
I am also a Kansan and I am furious over the two billion dollars that Senator Brownback has managed to earmark. This man is retiring from the Senate and will be our new Governor come January.
I was hoping for an improvement after Sebelius and her Democrat minions left office, but I truly fear for our State’s future under the governance of Sam Brownback, who has presidential aspirations.
I have long known that Brownback and Sen. Roberts are in the pockets of Big Ag, but this is ridiculous.
Fie on them both.
I checked on the pork products submitted by lame duck Kirkpatrick of CD1 in Arizona. My overall impression is that her list slants heavily toward the counties that she carried in her failed re-election bid. Almost exactly half ($3.25 million of 6.4 million) going to the greater Flagstaff, AZ area (her home town). If you add in the Navajo Nation and Navajo County pork, it’s 2/3′s of the total. Keep in mind that CD1 is the largest in Arizona, comprised of seven counties of which only 4 appear to be in line for pork in her list. One might think that Ms. Kirkpatrick is planning some future electoral or patronage job in Northern Arizona.
The really big laugh is the 1 million that she is designating to Northern Arizona University (in Flagstaff of course) that is to “increase college retention and graduation rates, which may include purchase of equipment and technology”. Wow, that’s so vague that basically it looks like a million dollar slush fund for the University to enjoy.
This list does not surprise me in the least. Good riddance to bad rubbish and Rep Kirkpatrick, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. I wish to welcome our new representative Dr. Paul Gozar who campaigned on opposition to business as usual in DC.
Well, how lovely. Line 1231 in the Coburn Excel file has Congressman Bobby Rush earmarking $400,000 to the Beloved Community and Family Services organization for the “Total Family Project.” Who founded Beloved Community and Family Services, Inc.? Why, “Pastor” Bobby L. Rush! See http://www.belovedfamily.org/. I’m thinking that this might be a bit of a conflict of interest. Does it count as a bribe if you earmark funds for your own organization?
See more here:http://news.muckety.com/2009/01/07/illinois-rep-bobby-rush-helps-his-friends-and-vice-versa/9701
“Besides representing Illinois in the House of Representatives, Rush is an ordained minister at Beloved Community Christian Church. In 2004, he founded a non-profit social services arm of the church, Beloved Community Family Services Inc., which works with at-risk children in the impoverished Englewood neighborhood, and then, Beloved Community Family Wellness Center, a community health center.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown wrote that the wellness center has received more than $2 million in state funding over the last three years. The family service agency has received at least $250,000 in state funds in the same period.”
Line 1250: Durbin earmarks $350k to Casa Central, which bills iteslf as “now the largest Hispanic social service agency in Chicago and arguably in the country, providing programs for all ages.” So I guess he’s trying to help buy the Latino vote.
Could not help but notice the large amounts and the great number of “earmarks” Sen Murkowski from AK has in the omnibus bill. Amazing that she wants so much from the Feds when AK has so much extra revenue that one gets #3,000 bonus check from the state of AK for merely living there. Why cannot AK pay for many of these projects out of all that cash they have from oil revenue….NO, the rest of the country must pay for all this pork in AK; the sasm answer holds for all states with all the pork. If it is something the state MUST have, let them pay for it themselvers…not by the Federal Government. Really crappy !!
Line 1383 – Danny Davis (D-IL) allocates $150K to the Juvenile Justice Leadership Navigation Project of the Sankofa Safe Child Initiative, which says on its website that: “We believe that we can develop Train the Trainer African Centered Family Practice approaches to address issues that affect our community We believe in the African centered approach to effect self-determination as a people through education, training, preparation and advocacy.” See
http://www.sankofasafechild.org/main.html?src=%2Findex2.html#2,0.
Whatever the heck that means.
Lines 1390 and 1391, 250K each to the “College Success Initiative” and the “Roseland College Success Initiative,” both to go to “SGA Youth & Family Services” in Chicago, IL. Website says founded in 1911 in part by Jane Addams. http://www.sga-youth.org/. The first line was sponsored by Gutierrez, the second by Jackson. Maybe they only jointly meant to do one earmark of $250K, and they just got typed up as if they were two different earmarks? In any event, the organization got over $1.2 million from HHS last year, and had operating expenses of 4.7 million, according to their annual report. They spent over 500K on fundraising, and have over 5 million in assets, and some large corporate donors. Can we skip this one?
Yay to my Congressman Peter Roskam (IL). No earmarks identified. Of course, our district is pretty consistently Republican in DuPage County, I guess…he won 64-36 over the Dem.
The search function doesn’t seem to work on the database.
I am also confused that Sen Alexnder of TN had 30 earmarks by one report yesterday and I find “only” 7 in the linked database. What gives?
Using the filter at the top row, I find 42 earmarks with Alexander’s name on them in the Senate requestor column.
I may have mis-read Brownback’s number. I thought it was $2 million. Considering the possible advantages of using the vast amount of waste as energy, I don’t think $2 mil is too much. If you don’t at least explore the potential, you go no where. At least lets check it out.
I’ve always been on the fence re earmarks. I bought the line that the politicians were better attuned to local needs than some executive department. Then I heard Dick Morris explain the real deal on earmarks.
His example was a state university hires a lobbyist to get them some $$ via an earmark. The lobbyist works the hallways and scores an earmark for the university. Then, lo and behold, coincidence of all coincidences, that very lobbying firm contributes to that particular politician’s next election campaign.
That sure opened my eyes.
2011 Omnibus Earmarks requested by Florida Congressional Delegation
Created a spreadsheet for the earmarks requested by Florida’s Congressional delegation by filtering for Bill Nelson and then each representative each individually, then combining the results and removing the duplicates.
-Total of 152 earmarks requested, of those 81 were requested by a sole member.
-All were requested by Democrats.
- Of the Representatives, Debbie Wasserman-Schulz had her name attached to the most. However, there were only a few on which she was the sole requester. The lame duck Allan Boyd led the way for solo requests with 12.
Breakout is as follows (first number is the total requested by that member, second number is how many “solo requests” they had).
Bill Nelson 61/21
Allan Boyd 25/12
Corrine Brown 19/6
Alan Grayson 13/9
Katherine Castor 12/7
Kendrick Meek 24/13
Ted Deutch 6/1
Debbie Wasserman Schultz 35/7
Ron Klein 19/2
Alcee Hastings 29/4
Suzanne Kosmas 13/7
Gosh, Robin (21), you’re right. It may be worth looking into. Maybe Brownback should sponsor a bill? No, much easier to hide it among 1500 pages of pork in a “Must Pass” bill.
If it won’t stand up on its own, then it’s likely a wasteful giveaway. I don’t want to borrow two million for this and hand the bill to my grandkids. If there are “advantages to using the vast amount of waste as energy,” then someone will put their own money behind it. Maybe even me. Just don’t take that money from me by force (taxes) just because you’re so much smarter than me. Or somehow more committed to the environment.
Our first coins were minted with “Mind Your Business” on them for a reason.