Thursday, September 13, 2007

Halfway Done, FY 2008 Congressional Earmarks Cut in Half

It's only a halftime score, but with all 12 of the House FY 2008 appropriations bills adopted, the total number and dollar value of the congressional earmarks included in these bills -- 6,651 earmarks worth $7.95 billion -- is down by about half from the 13,492 congressional earmarks totaling $18.94 billion in FY 2005.

These numbers reflect calculations based on data from the official OMB earmarks website. Caveat: the site contains a full accounting of earmarks only for FY 2005, and only for congressionally-requested earmarks (omitting all executive branch earmarks requests).

Early signals are less auspicious for the final score, as the Senate had only adopted three appropriations bills by the end of last week, with 4,700 earmarks passed thus far, equaling $12.14 billion. These figures do not include the Senate defense bill. The House defense bill -- $4 billion in earmarks -- accounted for half of the value of House earmarks.

But willy-nilly, certainly the overall number and possibly the dollar value of congressional earmarks will be down from FY 2005.