Of the roughly 1,040 Pentagon procurement programs--the $99.3 billion part of the Defense budget devoted to purchasing new equipment--some 212 of them, worth $21.4 billion, fund the work of a single company.

The Army wants $551 million to buy surface-to-air missiles from Lockheed Martin. The Navy wants to spend $157 million the aerospace giant's KC-130J tanker plane. The Air Force has $291 million worth of JASSM missiles on its wish list. Altogether, defense procurement programs worth $6.9 billion name Lockheed Martin as their sole contractor. And they're not the only one: 14 companies, including Boeing, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, were the only contractor listed on programs totaling $100 million or more.

Congress is now in the midst of its secretive spending process, with members of the Appropriations Committees of the House and Senate considering programmatic and language requests submitted by their colleagues--increases or decreases in the amount spent, or changes in emphasis in each program in the federal budget. Unlike an earmark, which directed money to a single, named recipient, a programmatic request refers only to a specific program in the the federal budget.

Some requests ask for additional funding for programs with hundreds of thousands of individual beneficiaries like loans and other aid for low income housing. And some requests can benefit a handful of contractors, or even just one.

Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman C.W. "Bill" Young, R-Fla., instructed colleagues to "include the applicable account and line number in the beginning of the program request description (i.e. RDTE A Line 30)." That particular account refers to the Army's Research, Development, Test and Evaluation budget; line 30 is for medical advanced research, which, according to the Army's budget justification documents for the program, includes 8 separate projects ranging from treating combat injuries to breast cancer.

In contrast, line 4 of the Navy Procurement budget refers to advanced funding for Virginia Class submarines. The Navy's budget justification lists Connecticut-based Electric Boat, a subsidiary of General Dynamics, as the prime contractor (four other companies--Kollmorgen, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and Stanley Associates, provide components for the submarine). In 2012, during the last round of Pentagon budgeting, one of the company's home state lawmakers, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, included that line item in his programmatic requests, which he disclosed online. Blumenthal requested an additional $777.6 million to expedite work on an additional submarine. The Navy's current budget justification notes that "Advance Procurement includes $778M required to fund the 2nd FY14 SSN as proposed as a FY13 Congressional Add."

Chances are Blumenthal wasn't the only member of Congress who requested the additional funding. But because neither the Senate nor the House discloses programmatic requests, it's impossible to say how many other members of Congress added their names to the request for additional funding for the Virginia Class Submarine.

Programmatic and language requests can direct hundreds of millions of dollars to programs that benefit a specific company. But unlike earmarks, many of which went to obscure firms like Kuchera Defense Systems, companies that have their own programs are generally among the biggest defense contractors. Lockheed Martin, for example, is the sole contractor listed for procurement programs totaling a proposed $6.9 billion, an increase of $1.3 billion over the programs' budget in the last fiscal year. Boeing is the sole contractor listed on $5.8 billion worth of programs, a drop of $95 million from last year. Raytheon was listed on $2.2 billion worth of programs, Northrop Grumman for $1.7 billion, and United Technologies for $1.2 billion. Not every dollar budgeted for those programs will go to those contractors--part will pay for oversight of the project within the military and other expenses, some will go to subcontractors, but if the Pentagon buys an extra submarine, or ups the number of replacement engines for the Joint Strike Fighter it acquires, the firm that provides those items will benefit accordingly.

In the first quarter of 2013, all five companies have disclosed lobbying on the procurement budget (to see the disclosures for Lockheed Martin, click here and here; for Boeing here and here; for Raytheon here, for Northrop Grumman here and for United Technologies here).

To view or download a complete list of Pentagon procurement programs that list only one recipient in the budget justification, click here. The data comes from a spreadsheet we downloaded from the Comptroller of the Defense Department; we looked up each line item in the procurement budget justifications--available from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Defense Department--to look for contractor names. As always, if you find errors, please contact us and let us know. Note: We only looked in the procurement budget for Defense, so this by means exhausts the number of federal programs that primarily benefit one company.

To read prior posts on darkmarks, click here and here.

U.S. Navy photo by Chris Oxley.

By making a programmatic request asking for additional funding for line 3 of the Army aircraft procurement budget, a member of Congress can direct taxpayer money to General Atomics. Increasing funding for line 7 of the Army missile procurement budget does the same for Raytheon. Line 19 of the Navy's weapons procurement funds a program supplied solely by Lockheed Martin.

Yesterday, we started exploring programmatic and language requests--the mechanism that allows individual members of Congress to ask the Appropriations Committees to provide additional funding for different programs in the President's Budget. House members face their next deadline for submitting requests, via an online system, tomorrow.

Unlike earmark requests, which Congress declared a moratorium on after Republicans captured the House in 2010, programmatic requests are not directed to a single recipient, but rather affect set levels and priorities for specific programs. The requests are not disclosed to the public.

In a letter sent to members, Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young, R-Fla., chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, instructed members to include the account and line number for each request. A spreadsheet listing all of them is available here. In addition to the spreadsheet, the Defense Department and the service branches publish thousands and thousands of pages of justifications for each program (you can access them all from the bottom of this page). These include descriptions like this one:

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program will develop and field a family of aircraft that meets the needs of the United States and its international partners. ... Its advanced avionics, data links and adverse weather precision targeting incorporate the latest technology available. The highly supportable, affordable, state-of-the-art aircraft commands and maintains global air superiority.

They also list the contractor--or contractors--that work on each program, like the F-35. That plane actually has more than one manufacturer involved. Lockheed Martin is the project lead while United Technologies' subsidiary Pratt & Whitney builds the engines (they're listed in the budget justification) and Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems also contribute to the project.

The F-35 in its various configurations can be found in the Airforce and Navy budget justifications--Navy Procurement Lines 5 to 8 (for carrier and short vertical take-off and landing configurations) and Air Force Procurement Lines 1-3. A member of Congress requesting additional funding for the Joint Strike Fighter is also requesting additional funding for Lockheed Martin and its partners.

There are 1,062 total procurement programs listed in Pentagon budget justifications. Sunlight has slogged through about 680 of them, of which about 145 list just one contractor. In other words, requesting additional funding for those 145 programs could benefit just one company. Generally, it's the bigger contractors that have programs all to themselves, companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Dynamics.

Some go so far as to spell out that a program is devoted to a single company, like this entry from a Fiscal Year 2013 budget justification for upgrades to an Air Force surveillance plane: "Delivery Orders were awarded on 31 July 2009 for the replacement portion of the RASP hardware and software subsystem along with Central Computer Subsystem upgrades and on 1 June 2010 for the replacement portion of the OWS computer. The contract is Sole Source to Northrop Grumman under the Joint STARS System Improvement Program II (JSSIP) contract."

Tomorrow, we'll look at a programmatic request referencing that line item.

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, we wanted to see what Congress keeps close to its heart. Using Capitol Words, we searched the Congressional Record to see what lawmakers love from the good ole’ U. S of A. to baked goods to — well, themselves.

Comparing these common declarations, Capitol Words shows that Democrats and Republicans are pretty even when it comes to love (50% to 49%, respectively), while Republicans say “I hate” more than their colleagues across the aisle (54% to 45%).

Congress regularly mentions a love of country and our democratic principals. Since 1996, the phrase “I love my country” is more popular among Democrats than Republicans. However, GOP lawmakers say “I love the Constitution” more.

Both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell love their chamber, but former Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) said “I love the Senate” more than anyone else. When the current Hawaii governor Neil Abercrombie served in Congress, he said “I love the House” the most.

Our elected officials like to talk about their personal interests, too. Former comedian Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) loves TV, and Reps. Donna Edwards (D-MD) and Louise Slaughter (D-NY) love football. And former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) loves pie (but not pie charts).

Have a very Happy Valentine’s Day courtesy of Capitol Words. And don’t forget Congress loves you.

The Sunlight Foundation’s legislative branch agenda for the 113th Congress is sweeping and comprehensive, but if Congress is committed to transparency, many of Sunlight’s recommendations can be quickly adopted. Sunlight’s legislative recommendations to improve transparency fall into three broad areas: Lobbying, Money in Politics, and Government Data. For each item, a one-page description is available on our website.

Lobbying Transparency

Congress should adopt comprehensive lobbying reform to require real time online disclosure of lobbyists’ activities. The Lobbyist Disclosure Enhancement Act would ensure that those who are paid to lobby register as lobbyists and would create more transparency around lobbyists’ interactions with Members of Congress.

The Lobbying Disclosure Act should also be amended to require registration and reporting by “political intelligence” firms that specialize in gathering nonpublic information from Hill sources in order to enrich investors and manipulate stock markets.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) should be amended so that detailed information about foreign lobbying is available online, in real time, in a searchable, sortable, downloadable database.

Money in Politics

Greater transparency of money in politics is vital to restore accountability and trust in our democratic institutions. Congress should eliminate dark money’s influence on elections by passing a version of the DISCLOSE Act. Legislation requiring disclosure of corporate political expenditures by publicly held companies would also shine a light on much of the dark money infecting our elections.

The 2012 election demonstrated that presidential candidates can not be counted on to voluntarily disclose information about who is giving to their campaigns. Legislation requiring disclosure of presidential bundlers, as well as candidates’ tax returns would provide voters with insight into potential conflicts of interests and executive branch influencers.

The Senate should, at long last, pass legislation requiring senate candidates to electronically file their campaign finance reports.

Government Data

A number of previously introduced pieces of legislation would dramatically increase openness of government data. Congress should pass the Public Online Information Act (POIA), to require Executive Branch agencies to publish all publicly available information on the Internet in a timely fashion and in user-friendly formats.

The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act (ACMRA) would make agency reports more accessible to the public. Legislation to ensure the public has access to Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports would also ensure valuable, objective reports are publicly available.

As fiscal cliff negotiations continue, it is clear that federal spending transparency is sorely deficient. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA) would establish an open and accountable system for tracking every dollar that the federal government spends.

As the 113th Congress begins, we hope new and old members will commit to making transparency a top agenda item.

As we expected, the culmination of the "fiscal cliff" negotiations was a rush to the finish line, in which policies decided by a few men in a room were passed through the Congress without amendment. The last few days of congressional deliberations were so bad they make the supercommittee look participatory, or, as Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch observed, they make "the passage of Obamacare seem like the apex of republican democracy."

Some observations on the mess:

The Unread Bill: Despite Boehner's many promises to the contrary, the bill was not online for 72 hours. This isn't a surprise, since the House wasn't really a party to the final negotiations, and relegated itself to the binary position of pass or veto usually reserved for the President. The House voted blind, with about 12 hours of access to the bill, starting New Year's morning, before floor debate. The only bright spot here is that the House Rules Committee helpfully posted the bill as soon as they had it. Of course, that's nowhere near adequate time to process a bill, so stories of the ridiculous corporate tax subsidies in the bill only came out as the floor debate started.

This is a side effect of not legislating. If Congress legislates, then they'll have access to legislation. If they try to maximize imaginary leverage through crisis brinksmanship, then their role gets diminished to the point that they're voting on things they haven't read.

Someone Had Access: While Congress (and the rest of us) only just found out what was in the bill, a coterie of corporate lobbyists managed to get their profit-boosting tax expenditures included. It's hard to imagine how NASCAR and Hollywood had stronger negotiating positions than the House of Representatives, but in the end, they did.

Faith, Lost: One fake disclosure and staged leak after another punctuated the entirety of the negotiations, from CPI to brave phone calls to congressional curse words. In the absence of substantive proposals, the public was cast into the world of fake narratives and reassurances. Our party leaders provided no check whatsoever against manipulative PR negotiating tactics.

What Deal: We cautioned in November that we are unlikely to know the outlines of the entire deal, since concessions could be made outside the context of legislation. (This is not a hypothetical concern).  This seems less likely to have happened in yesterday's deal -- the process was so convoluted that secret deal terms would probably have been impossible to agree to. The fact remains, though, that when the negotiating table is utterly unseen, we can't know what's put on it in our names.

Groundhog Day: We'll be at it again in a few months, and it's likely to get worse.  Each iteration of these negotiations has produced less public information -- heightening fearmongering, and uncertainty, while further empowering those with privileged access.  It's probably going to get worse before it gets better.  Our recommendation still stands -- Refuse to cynically accept secret negotiations as the status quo for self-government.  

‘Tis the season for application programming interfaces. Sunlight is in a festive mood. Not only are we hosting a pretty rad open house this week, but we have the perfect present for the open data developer in your life: a Sunlight Labs API key!

Here are our “12 days of APIs,” with a few bulk data sets thrown in to round it out. No singing required! Be sure to also check out some new additions and better accessibility we’ll have available in 2013.

12 minutes spent researching our API offerings on Sunlight Academy, which includes a brief tutorial video.

11 television markets reported more than 1,500 political ad filings this election. Download data about who bought more than $3 billion in political ads in 2012 from Political Ad Sleuth.

10 methods provided in the Sunlight Congress API. Our most popular API includes basic information on members of Congress, legislator IDs and lookups between places and the politicians that represent them.

9 political races had more than $20 million in outside spending this election. Download the bulk data on the money spent by super PACs, unions, corporations, nonprofits and other groups this cycle at Follow the Unlimited Money.

8 data sets covered by the Influence Explorer API (neé TransparencyData), which includes federal and state campaign contributions, federal lobbying, government grants and contracts, EPA violations, federal regulations and more.

7 collections presented in the Real Time Congress API. Get as close to real-time data as possible on bills, votes, amendments, videos, floor updates, committee hearings and documents.

6 standard arguments to query in the Capitol Words API. Search the Capitol Record since 1996 and filter your results by state, party, chamber, date, start date or end date.

5(0) states available in the Open States API, which also covers D.C. and Puerto Rico. Use the RESTful API or bulk download to access the only comprehensive collection of state legislative data in the U.S.

4 ways to get Political Party Time data. Use the JSON feed, CSV file, RSS feed or relational zip file to know when politicians are fundraising and who is hosting the events.

3 mobile apps powered by our APIs: Real Time Congress for iPhone, Congress for Android and OpenStates for iPhone and iPad. (And check out Call on Congress if you don’t have a smartphone.)

2 options to get Scout alerts, by email or via text message. Scout uses a variety of Sunlight APIs—Capitol Words, Real Time Congress and Open States—to deliver real-time policy alerts on state and national issues, as well as has special user option for developers.

And a listserv to follow what’s happening in Sunlight Labs.

Flickr photo of partridge in a pear tree light display by K. van Santen.