May 3, 2007

Tennessee Pork

Instapundit notes a Washington Examiner story showing just how difficult it is to find out which member of Congress sponsored any specific "earmark" in federal appropriations bills, despite the recent creation of a public database of earmarks.
Earmarks are funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly allocate funds. Congress includes earmarks in appropriation bills - the annual spending bills that Congress enacts to allocate discretionary spending - and also in authorization bills. In fiscal year 2005, there were 13,497 earmarks totaling $18,917,823,000 for appropriations accounts across all states.

The Office of Management and Budget created the new earmarks database but admits, "This database is not designed, and cannot accurately be used, to identify the individual congressional sponsors of earmarks."

According to the database, there were a total of 211 Tennessee earmarks, totalling more than $254.6 million, in fiscal year 2005. You can access the list of them here.

Among the 211 earmarks, $1.984 million for the Regional Transportation Authority for "Nashville, Tennessee, East Corridor Commuter Rail," - the Music City Star commuter train that is attracting a paltry number of riders.

Another good tool to track federal spending is FedSpending.org where you can search the database by name and find out how much federal money an entity - a university, for example - has received from Uncle Sam and for what purpose.