Earmarks

2009-2-26 01:35:00

There appears to be some "pork" in the latest $410 billion omnibus spending bill passed in the House yesterday (Feb 25) -- in the form of some 9,000 "earmarks"!

Among these earmarks (or "pork") are:

For Harry Reid -- $143,000 to expand history programs at Las Vegas History Museum.
For Wyoming -- $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.
For Tattoo removal -- $200,000.
For Richard Shelby in Alabama -- $819,000 for Catfish Genome mapping.
Honey bee lab in Texas -- $1,762,000.
To battle Mormon crickets in Utah -- $1,049,000.
For the Montana Sheep Institute -- $254,000.
Senator Tom Harkin is requesting $1,791,000 for swine odor and manure management.
Senator Chuck Shumer wants $2,192,000 for buildings at the Center for Grape Genetics.
For improving blueberry production and efficiency -- $200,000.
For research in shellfish technologies -- $331,000.
Salaries for the sugar beet oncology labs in Michigan -- $5,000,000.
For the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii -- $2,000,000.

Also in Hawaii: Rodent control -- $162,0000; and a fruit fly facility -- $469,0000; and for education programs at the Polynesian Voyaging Society -- $238,000.

$5.8 million has been earmarked for the "Ted Kennedy Institute for the Senate" for the planning and design of a building & an endowment.

Obama promised to go line by line through "earmarks" and eliminate the ones that were not essential. Here we have 9,000 in additional to the stimulus bill, and I haven't heard of one earmark being deleted.

"We need earmark reform," Obama said in September during a presidential debate in Oxford, Miss. "And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."