WASHINGTON — John Adams never set foot in what is now the Lone Star State. But a local congressman, utilizing a controversial practice commonly reserved for local projects, wants to honor the Massachusetts revolutionary who became the nation's second president.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, has submitted a half-million dollar earmark request to the House Appropriations Committee that would help finance a Washington monument for Adams, the subject of an HBO miniseries, and his son John Quincy, the country's sixth president.

Culberson's spending request is an increasingly common twist on the traditional earmark — funding for specific programs that are inserted into the budget by members of Congress or the administration.

Usually, the earmarks are defended by lawmakers as necessary to ensure that home-district projects get their share of federal tax dollars. But lawmakers also are seeking money for personal causes and subjects that capture their fancy — even if the funds are sent far from their congressional districts.

Sprinkled among the $2.1 billion of earmark submissions from the Houston delegation for the next fiscal year are a handful of requests such as Culberson's that are not tailored for purely local needs.

Case in point: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, is seeking $2.4 million for the Atlanta-based Dikembe Mutombo Foundation, founded by the Houston Rockets basketball player. Mutombo's organization provides health care assistance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the African nation where he was born.

Preservation effort

Libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul, R-Lake Jackson, has asked for $36 million to restore funding for national reading programs that President Bush wants to cut despite past support from his wife and mother.

And aside from the money for a future Adams memorial, Culberson has asked for $10 million for a Civil War Battlefield Preservation program.

Culberson, who boasts about his record as a fiscal conservative, justified the requests by saying that "historic preservation is an essential function of the federal government."

Long an admirer of the strong-willed and deeply principled Adams, Culberson noted that the first book he read after he was sworn in as congressman was David McCullough's biography of the former president. The book is the basis of the current HBO series.

The congressman said the Adams Library of American Letters plans to raise most of the money privately for a memorial envisioned on Pennsylvania Avenue. "All they need is a kick-start to get them going," Culberson said.

In pushing the earmark, Culberson has teamed up with a Massachusetts Democrat, Rep. William Delahunt, whose district near Boston includes the Adams family home in Quincy.

Culberson noted that he also has supported earmarks for a preservation project in Houston to restore the Battleship Texas. That project has earned the ire of the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, John McCain, who cited it as an example of unnecessary federal spending.

Brain Riedl, a budget expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that funding for historic projects should be determined through merit-based federal selection programs and not congressional whim.

"You'd hope the creation of a new Washington monument is debated a little more than through an earmark slipped through at midnight," he said.

In recent months, the congressional Republican leadership has pushed unsuccessfully for a moratorium on earmarks so that stricter transparency rules could be adopted.

That move hasn't seemed to slow Texas lawmakers' appetite for earmarks. The vast majority of Houston lawmakers of both parties have requested funding for 289 projects for the fiscal year that begins in October.

Only Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, whose district stretches from western Harris County to Austin, has announced that he will not request earmarks for the coming year.

Last month, lawmakers submitted earmark wish lists to the Appropriations Committee, which will choose projects to be inserted into budget bills later this year.

Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, requested the greatest dollar amount of earmarks, $415,665,384, closely followed by Jackson Lee, $415,487,163 and Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, $412,132,360.

All three members have requested a $125 million earmark for the Houston Metro light rail projects that would go through their districts and a $90 million earmark for new buses. If both Metro earmarks are approved, all three lawmakers would be named joint sponsors.

Most of Jackson Lee's other earmarks would go to local programs such as the Children's Museum, the YMCA of Greater Houston and the University of Houston National Wind Energy Center.

But she also is seeking money to help Mutombo, the 7'2'' center who has played with the Rockets since 2004 and whose foundation seeks to improve life for the Congolese, with particular emphasis on health care.

Health care elsewhere

Jackson Lee said she had been working with Mutombo, whom she stressed "plays and works in Houston" on an earmark to be inserted in a foreign operations appropriations bill that would defray operating costs of the only hospital in the Congo.

"Health care is enormously important and needed not only in the United States but around the world," Jackson Lee said.

Although he has been running for president based in part on a pledge to streamline the federal government, Paul is asking for the largest dollar amount in earmarks among area Republicans.

The congressman's $407 million wish list includes $26 million for "Reading is Fundamental," which is based in Washington, and $10 million for the Boston-based "Reach out and Read."

Proposed cut

President Bush proposed cutting these literacy programs in his budget proposal for 2009 — even though they have been closely associated with members of the Bush family for decades and have been funded by Congress in the past.

Both reading programs are active in Paul's district south of Houston. But the congressman has requested federal funding that the two organizations sought not just for his district but for their entire national programs.

Norman Singleton, Paul's legislative director, said all of the congressman's earmark requests were made because someone in his district had asked him for the funding. Both reading organizations have encouraged their local members to lobby Congress.

Singleton also said that although Paul wants to reduce the size of the federal budget, "he has been very clear that a program that provides books to children is not where he wants to start making those cuts."

Corinne Hirsch, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, said President Bush had put a priority in his budget on funding for his own "Reading First" program, which she said had proved more effective than the other reading programs.

Notable earmarks requested for 2008 by the local congressional delegation:

• Rep. John Culberson , R-Houston : a half-million dollar request to help finance a monument in Washington, D.C., for former presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

• Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston : $2.4 million for the Atlanta-based Dikembe Mutombo Foundation, founded by the Houston Rockets player to provide health care in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

• Rep. Ron Paul, R-Lake Jackson : $36 million to restore funding for national reading programs that President Bush wants to cut.

Patrick Brendel in the Washington Bureau contributed to this story.

bennett.roth@chron.com