Wednesday, April 02, 2008

2007 Senate Earmark (Pork) Spending

"Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released the 2008 Congressional Pig Book, the latest installment in an 18-year exposé of pork-barrel spending." I believe it covers 2007 since they list Trent Lott (R-MS) but the Senator list also lists Allen and Michaud who are in the House. It covers earmarks that congressional members insert into bills without debate. The total was a rather disgusting $17.2 billion. The top 10 were equally split with 5 Democrats and 5 Republics but the next 10 had 9 Democrats and only 1 Republican.

Andrew Malcolm in an LA Times Blog looks at how the remaining presidential candidates faired. "New Pig Book says Hillary Clinton's tops in pork spending, Barack Obama's 2nd, but John McCain had none!" It's accurate but I think it skews things a little more against Clinton than perhaps she deserves. For example while dubbing her the "new grand national oinker among presidential contenders" it doesn't say that she was 13th overall and far behind the leader Thad Cochran (R-MS) with 245 projects for $892.2 million. Obama wa 70th and McCain was one of 5 Senators (3 Reps and 2 Dems) who had no earmarks. Here are the numbers:

13. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) 281 for $296.2 million
70. Barack Obama (D-IL) 53 for $97.4 million
96. John McCain (R-AZ) 0 for $0


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So is McCain better at hiding it, or the the report biased?

Howard said...

Neither. This is the first year that senators have to publish their names on their earmarks. The numbers are real. You can debate if the projects funded were worthwhile, but the money was spent.