Budget bills contain $20 billion in pork

It looks like Congress won’t even come close to giving up those irresistible earmarks.

Citizens Against Government Waste, which closely monitors federal spending, is putting the finishing touches on its tally of pork projects in the pending spending bills — and the picture isn’t pretty. The group estimates that there will be at least 8,000 earmarks this year, costing U.S. taxpayers, $18 billion to $20 billion.

Democrats and Republicans alike had promised to curtail the practice of directing money to specific projects.

They have, but not nearly as dramatically as their campaign rhetoric had suggested. In the last fiscal year, when Republicans controlled Congress, there were $29 billion in total earmarks.

So Democrats can rightly claim they are reducing the practice, perhaps by as much as 33 percent, as Congress Daily’s Keith Koffler reported this afternoon.

Republicans will rightly claim they have put intense pressure on the Democratic Congress to eliminate many earmarks. Of course, the GOP argument is undercut by the explosion of earmarking when they ruled Congress.

Koffler, who got an early look at the figures, reported that Defense bill was a huge magnet for earmarks. It included 2,074 projects, totally $6.6 billion.

Citizens Against Government Waste is basing its overall projections on a detailed examination of three spending bills, and applying the trend to the remaining appropriations bills.

— Jim VandeHei