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Today, USA Today provides an exclusive overview of a report requested by Dr. Coburn from the Congressional Research Service on earmarked accounts reduced (and not reduced) in the short-term Continuing Resolution (H.J. Res. 48), revealing the pledge to ban earmarks has been broken after identifying nearly $5 billion in congressional pet projects that were left untouched.
The CRS summary provides:
H.J. Res. 48 makes $2.6 billion of reductions to 51 earmarked accounts across 4 appropriations bills. The preceding CR (P.L. 112-4) made $2.8 billion of reductions to 49 different earmarked accounts in 5 different appropriations bills. Thus, together, these two CRs have cut $5.3 billion from 100 of 192 earmarked accounts across 9 of the 11 appropriations bills with earmarks. For some accounts, the reduction equal the total amount of earmarks in each account. For others, the reduction equals or approximates the subset of Member-only earmarks (excluding what are disclosed as Administration earmarks). In yet other cases, the reduction exceeds the amount of earmarks. Only the Defense and Military Construction-Veterans Affairs appropriations bills remain untouched by the reductions in earmarked accounts.
Read the full report here.
