Sunlight on Earmarks
Aug. 16, 2013, 5:12 p.m.
Definition
An earmark is a directed spending request made by a lawmaker in an appropriations or other spending bill. Recent disclosure changes, beginning in 2006, made earmarks far more transparent. The missing piece is a centralized format on the web for collecting, storing and distributing to the public information about earmark requests. The Earmark Transparency Act will finish the job and open the process to public scrutiny instead of a ban that would push such requests into the shadows.
While earmarks account for a very small portion of the total discretionary spending budget, they are linked to a high number of congressional scandals. Transparency in earmark spending is necessary to ensure an accountable government.
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Sunlight's Position
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Co-Sponsor the Earmark Transparency Act
Sunlight’s letter calling on members of Congress to support the Earmark Transparency Act
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Earmark Transparency Act – Senate Version
A bill that would create a single searchable, sortable database of earmark requests, providing one-stop shopping for valuable, detailed information about congressional earmarks.
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Earmark Transparency Act – House Version
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Projects
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Earmark Reform Bills
A comprehensive listing of earmark reform measures from the previous two Congresses.
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Earmark Watch
A completed distributed research project that identified recipients and sponsors of earmarks in 2008.
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Reporting
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Party Time – Earmark Investigations
Reporting from the Sunlight Foundation’s Party Time project tying earmarks to various fundraisers.
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'Disappearmarks'
A series of stories by the Sunlight Foundation’s Reporting Group that looks at funds set aside by Congress in federal transportation bills that have lapsed.
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The Favor Factory: Earmarks and Campaign Cash Connections
Three members of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee have received an average of $102,600 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of the companies they’ve favored with earmarks in the first six months of 2007.
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Defense Contractors Reap Windfall in 2005 Earmarks
The nation’s top defense contractors were also the biggest beneficiaries of congressional earmarks in 2005, an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation has found.
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Dennis Hastert's Real Estate Investments
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has used an Illinois trust to invest in real estate near the proposed route of the Prairie Parkway, a highway project for which he’s secured $207 million in earmarked appropriations. The trust has already transferred 138 acres of land to a real estate development firm that has plans to build a 1,600-home community, located less than six miles from the north-south connector Hastert has championed in the House.
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Editorials
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TV
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Articles
