LegiStorm: Transparency's Sidekick

LegiStorm has now doubled its availability of legislative earmarks, adding $19.9 billion worth of so-called "pork barrel" projects from the 2009 fiscal year to its searchable database.

The earmark data is courtesy of the Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS), a non-partisan group which scoured bills in Congress looking for the spending provisions, finding 11,286 in all. Earmarks are controversial because they are spending directed at a specific organization or purpose but do not undergo the usual competitive process.

Proponents say only elected representatives know best what their constituents need. Critics call them wasteful and corrupting, pointing to burgeoning scandals and even criminal charges aimed at some of the more seedy practices in this growth industry. 

The Pentagon may not have wanted them but members of the House Appropriations Committee managed to fund two additional private jets partially for their own use, while also managing to avoid disclosure of these jets as legislative earmarks.

Roll Call, which reported the funding, noted that the move came after lawmakers scolded the CEOs of auto companies for flying private jets to a congressional hearing, turning private planes into a symbol of Wall Street greed leading to the recession.

In all, the committee funded three Gulfstream jets for the Air Force's passenger air service, which transports VIPs such as members of Congress. The Air Force had asked for one of the planes. The extra two that were funded were specficially assigned for Washington, D.C. area units - the same ones responsible for transporting members of Congress.

Spring is in the air and earmarks are flowing to the well-connected. The Hill newspaper illustrates that point this morning with a tale of how a New Jersey congressman has requested approximately $40 million in earmarks for clients of a lobbying firm managed by his former chief of staff.

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), the ranking member of the House Appropriations Energy and Water Development subcommittee, has made 12 earmark requests for entities represented by Winning Strategies, the firm managed by his former chief of staff, Donna Mullins.

Three of the earmark requests, totaling $9 million, went to generous campaign donors. Winning Strategies was one of Frelinghuysen's top five campaign donors in the last election, with Mullins donating $13,600 since 2003. The Hill finds that neither Frelinghuysen nor Winning Strategies appear to be breaking any rules in their actions, but notes that the requests demonstrate the importance of the revolving door in the lobbying process. As Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense told The Hill, "People with very tight connections are able to deliver for their clients." Frelinghuysen says that his earmark requests serve the interests of his constituents. His office would not comment on the relationship between the congressman and Winning Strategies.

Earmarks are getting some renewed attention, and reporters are finding fresh examples of Washington's addiction to pork.

Roll Call has a story today about millions of dollars in earmarks requested by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) for his alma mater Tougaloo College. Problem is, the college doesn't know what the earmarks are for and it's not apparent it could provide the engineering services Thompson wants to fund since it has no discernible engineering program.

The story comes on the heels of the Washington Post's look this weekend at earmarks requested by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.). The Post highlighted the John Murtha Airport in Murtha's hometown of Johnstown, Pa., a lightly-used airport which has been kept afloat largely due to earmarks requested by Murtha.

 Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) has found herself in a bit of hot water on earmarks by declaring:

"I have not taken earmarks in the last three years that I've been in Congress, because the system is so corrupt."

LegiStorm's searchable earmarks database, however, shows that Bachmann sponsored seven earmarks - two on her own and five co-sponsored with other members - that totaled $3,767,600. The data was generously researched and provided to LegiStorm by Taxpayers for Common Sense.

This discrepancy earned mention in several blogs and on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" where the liberal commentator tagged Bachmann  with the moniker of "worst people in the world," a label he hands out each day to people, usually from the conservative political sphere, who ire him.

We are proud to launch the latest free LegiStorm resource, a free searchable database to track the explosive growth of legislative earmarks.

The earmarks database builds on other LegiStorm data so users can find important connections between otherwise unconnected facts, such as between earmarks and the corporate-sponsored travel or personal financial holdings of members of Congress and their staff.

"Earmarks have been at the center of several congressional scandals in the past few years, and openness in the process can help combat potential abuses of the earmark system," said Jock Friedly, a former Capitol Hill investigative reporter who is the founder and president of LegiStorm. "LegiStorm is proud to integrate earmarks data with our other data sets in order to bring deeper insight and increased transparency to congressional and executive spending."