If you thought the furor a few years ago over the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska prompted Congress to kill earmarks, think again. The 2010 budget approved by Congress and signed by the president contained nearly 10,000 congressional earmarks worth $15.9 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. There were more than 11,000 earmarks worth $15.6 billion the year before (Congress has yet to approve a new federal budget this year, so those are the most recent available figures). While the total cost of congressional earmarks was up slightly in 2010, there was a significant decline in the number of earmarks requested by senators and representatives, so at least some progress was made. But there is much more to the earmark story than the numbers. In March 2010, months before a massive November election victory that swept them back into the majority in the House and greatly increased their numbers in the Senate, the Republican conferences in both chambers adopted temporary earmark moratoriums. The bans were continued this year, and President Obama promised to veto any legislation that came to him containing earmarks. Also, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye of Hawaii said his panel would not accept earmark requests. So there shouldn’t be any earmarks, right?