Congressional pork is back.
Six years after congress banned spending “earmarks” for special projects after peaking at nearly $30 billion in tax dollars, lawmakers are sneaking them back into spending bills, according to the annual Pig Book from Citizens Against Government Waste.
The 2017 edition was released Wednesday morning and it showed 163 new earmarks in fiscal year 2017, a 32.5 one year increase.
The Pig Book summary said, “The cost of earmarks in FY 2017 is $6.8 billion, an increase of 33.3 percent from the $5.1 billion in FY 2016. While the increase in cost over one year is disconcerting, the 106.1 percent increase over the $3.3 billion in FY 2012, the first year after the moratorium, is downright disturbing.”
Defense received the most earmarks, said the group, a total of $5.2 billion. The most, $1,279,200,000, went to 31 earmarks for health and disease research under the Defense Health Program.
Others included:
- $9,000,000 for the aquatic plant control program.
- $57,590,000 for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program (HIDTA) at the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
- $5,900,000 for the East-West Center in Hawaii, intended to promote better relations with Pacific and Asian nations.
- $5,000,000 for the Asia Foundation, which is “committed to improving lives across a dynamic and developing Asia.”
Congress denies it is violating the earmark ban, but the Pig Book snorted no:
Members of Congress will argue that their standards differ from the earmark criteria used in the Pig Book, and that the appropriations bills are earmark-free according to their definition. However, the difference in the definition of earmarks between CAGW and Congress has existed since the first Pig Book in 1991. The pork-free claim can also be challenged based on the inclusion of projects that have appeared in past appropriations bills as earmarks. In addition to meeting CAGW’s long-standing seven-point criteria, to qualify for the 2017 Pig Book a project or program must have appeared in prior years as an earmark. The total number and cost of earmarks are, therefore, quite conservative.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
