(From left) Inouye, Cochran and Paul all sought funding for pet projects in fiscal 2011. | AP Photos Study: 39,294 earmarks sought

Members of Congress requested almost 40,000 earmarks worth more than $100 billion directed to their home districts and states for the current fiscal year, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis to be released Tuesday.

As Congress attempts to finalize appropriations legislation through next September, the new database shows that there remains a relentless bipartisan appetite for projects from coast to coast — whether it’s the $5 million Sen. Bill Nelson sought for an engineering project at the University of South Florida, the $1 million requested by Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) to develop soybeans resistant to a problematic pest, the $160,000 that Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) sought for a local Boys and Girls Club in Sacramento or the $2 million for a new transit transfer center in Lafayette called for by Sen. DickLugar (R-Ind.).


In total, the new database — developed by Taxpayers Against Earmarks, Taxpayers for Common Sense and WashingtonWatch.com — showed that House members and senators from both parties asked for 39,294 earmarks worth an eye-popping $131 billion.

The dollar figure represents only the amount for earmarks requested by lawmakers, not the amount for earmarks that actually make it into legislation, which has hovered around $16 billion annually in recent years. Some lawmakers ask for money they know they won’t get simply to respond to an individual constituency or for political purposes. And the total dollar amount also may be inflated because the database separately counts instances in which House members and senators may have sought money for the same project.

But the database is novel because it lays out in stark detail the deep-seated interest that lawmakers have to seek funding for parochial projects back home. While in recent years lawmakers have posted their earmark requests online, there never before has been a searchable database compiling all the requests, and a legislative push by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to mandate a congressional earmark database has stalled in the Senate.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said that since there are just a few months between when House and Senate appropriations panels get earmark requests from lawmakers and when spending bills are initially drafted, “it would be physically impossible for a small army to vet tens of thousands of requests in that short amount of time.”

“This data reinforces that Congress needs to pause and think about better ways to allocate our precious taxpayer dollars,” he said.

The database covers requests for fiscal 2011 — a time when House Republicans vowed to follow a self-imposed earmark moratorium and House Democrats said they would not seek money earmarked to for-profit companies. But some House Republicans clearly went their own way; Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), for instance, sought 51 earmarks worth more than $358 million.

When the new Congress convenes in January, it’ll be a much tougher climate in which to win backing for pet projects.

The incoming House GOP majority has already vowed to eliminate earmarks, saying that the projects often amount to wasteful spending that leads to corruption on Capitol Hill and improper legislative horse trading. The House ban pressured reluctant Senate Republican leaders to follow suit, and now the Senate GOP Conference has a self-imposed earmark moratorium for the duration of the new Congress.

But Senate Democrats have resisted curbs on the practice, saying that critics have demogogued Congress’s constitutional authority to set spending priorities across the country and that eliminating earmarks would simply transfer the money to other parts of the budget where the executive branch would have wide discretion to spend funds in the states.

That means the two chambers appear headed for a collision course after the appropriations season kicks off in the spring. Democrats argue they have already taken steps to make the once-secretive process more transparent, adding that they’ve moved to stop the most egregious abuses of earmarks since assuming power in Congress after the 2006 elections.

“What ultimately matters is not how many projects are requested but how many are actually included in legislation,” said John Bray, a spokesman for Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii). “Since the Democrats took back Congress in 2006, earmark levels in appropriations bills have been cut by more than half and now represent less than 1 percent of discretionary spending. This amounts to only a small fraction of the projects requested.”

The database also shows Inouye sought 195 earmarks worth $815 million, while the top Republican on the committee, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, requested 712 earmarks worth $2.5 billion.

In spending measures that went into law the previous year, Inouye’s and Cochran’s earmarks were prevalent — with the Mississippi Republican securing 252 earmarks worth nearly $500 million and Inouye racking up $392 million for his state, according to a separate analysis done by Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Congress has yet to pass any of its annual appropriations legislation for the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, and the government is operating under a stopgap resolution that ends Dec. 18. Appropriators are pushing for an omnibus appropriations bill, which would include earmarks, but spending foes are pushing Congress to enact a continuing resolution that would freeze funding levels through the rest of the fiscal year.

Brian Baker, president of Taxpayers Against Earmarks, said that his group was urging lawmakers “to reject any attempt during this lame-duck session of Congress to pass an omnibus bill.”