PB Spending Watch is an independent, nonpartisan website that follows federal spending: where the money goes, who put it there, and what it means for the people paying for it. The site covers earmarks, the budget process, government shutdowns and the debt ceiling in plain words, with the numbers attached and without taking sides.
What PB Spending Watch covers
The site explains how Washington spends money and why the fights over it keep happening. Coverage falls into five main areas, each written so a reader with no budget background can follow it.
Earmarks and pork-barrel spending
Earmarks are provisions that send federal money to a specific project, organization or place, usually at the request of one member of Congress. Critics call the practice “pork-barrel spending.” Supporters argue that lawmakers know their own districts better than federal agencies do.
Congress stopped earmarking in 2011, when a moratorium took hold in the 112th Congress. In 2021 both chambers brought earmarks back for fiscal year 2022, under new names and with disclosure rules. The House now calls them Community Project Funding and the Senate calls them Congressionally Directed Spending. Members have to post their requests in public and certify that they and their families gain nothing financially from them. Articles on the site explain how these requests work, who makes them, what they add up to and which ones deserve a closer look.
The federal budget process
The budget process is supposed to follow a calendar, and it almost never does. PB Spending Watch breaks down the president’s budget request, the twelve annual appropriations bills, continuing resolutions and omnibus packages. Articles also explain the difference between discretionary spending, which Congress sets every year, and mandatory spending such as Social Security and Medicare, which keeps running unless lawmakers change the law behind it.
Government shutdowns and the debt ceiling
A shutdown happens when Congress fails to pass funding before a deadline. For the whole government, that deadline is the start of the fiscal year on October 1. The debt ceiling is a separate fight over the legal limit on how much the Treasury can borrow to pay for spending Congress has already approved. People mix the two up all the time. The site covers each one on its own terms: what is at stake, which deadlines are real, and what happens to federal workers, programs and the public when talks break down.
Congress
People make spending decisions. The site follows the appropriations committees, the leadership negotiations and the individual members whose votes and requests shape the final bills. If a lawmaker campaigns against spending and also requests earmarks, or the other way round, the site reports it.
Federal programs and political news
Coverage also reaches the agencies and programs that receive federal money, from defense and transportation to agriculture and health. The site tracks the political news that moves the budget too: elections, leadership changes, executive actions and court rulings that affect spending.
Regular features
Four regular features turn the coverage into tools readers can come back to.
Weird Earmark of the Week
Each week the editors pick one earmark that stands out. Some are genuinely puzzling. Others sound strange but turn out to make sense once you read the fine print. Each entry explains what the money is for, who requested it, what it costs and what supporters and critics say about it. The aim is to make readers curious. Projects are never mocked just for the sake of it.
Shutdown Tracker
The shutdown tracker follows the current state of government funding. It shows when the next deadline falls, which appropriations bills have passed, whether a continuing resolution is in place and what Congress is doing about it. During a shutdown it is updated with what is closed, what stays open and how long the lapse has lasted.
Debt-Ceiling Tracker
The debt-ceiling tracker shows where the borrowing limit stands, when the Treasury expects to run out of room and where the politics stand. It explains “extraordinary measures” and the so-called X-date in terms anyone can follow.
Federal Spending by State
The federal spending by state tool lets you look up how much federal money flows to each state and what it pays for. It is a starting point if you want to see what Washington spending looks like close to home.
Who runs the site
A small, independent editorial team runs PB Spending Watch: the PB Spending Watch editors. Every article carries the byline “PB Spending Watch editors.” No single writer’s name appears on a story. The team as a whole is responsible for what is published.
The editors choose topics, research and write the coverage, check the facts and handle corrections. If you have a question about an article, the editors answer it.
Why the site exists
The federal government spends trillions of dollars a year. Most of the decisions behind that spending sit in documents few people ever read: appropriations bills, committee reports, budget resolutions and agency budget justifications. The details matter. One line in a spending bill can fund a bridge, a research lab or a museum project in a single member’s district, and it rarely makes the evening news.
PB Spending Watch exists to make that information easier to find and easier to understand. The test for every piece is simple. When you finish reading, you should know more about where your tax dollars went than you did before, and you should be able to check the work yourself.
History of this web address
The address porkbusters.org has a past. It was once home to PorkBusters, a campaign against congressional earmarks run by bloggers from 2006 to 2010 under earlier owners. That campaign pushed for cuts to pork-barrel spending and for more openness about who requested what.
PB Spending Watch is a new site, relaunched in 2026. It has no connection with the earlier site, its owners or its authors. The current editors share an interest in the subject, but they did not take part in that campaign. The campaign’s views are not the views of this site, and nothing here speaks for the people who ran it.
Older articles kept from this address
Some older articles published at this address were kept and brought up to date, because readers still look for them. Each one keeps its original publish date, so you can see when it first appeared. Where the facts have changed since then, such as rules on earmarks, budget figures or deadlines, the text has been corrected or the older information is clearly marked as history.
A nonpartisan approach
PB Spending Watch follows the money in both parties and holds both to the same standard. Republicans and Democrats have both requested earmarks, both have presided over shutdowns and both have voted to raise or suspend the debt ceiling.
The site does not endorse candidates, parties or ballot measures, and it never tells readers how to vote. Coverage reports what was spent, who decided it and what the record shows. The verdict is yours. When the editors argue a point, the piece is labelled as analysis or opinion so it is never mistaken for straight reporting. Claims from members of Congress, the White House, agencies and advocacy groups are credited to whoever made them, and the response from the other side is included where there is one.
How content is checked
Spending stories stand or fall on accuracy. Facts and advice on PB Spending Watch are checked against official sources, including:
- Congress.gov, for bill text, bill status, sponsors and roll call votes
- The Congressional Budget Office, for cost estimates, budget projections and deficit figures
- USAspending.gov, for what agencies actually obligated and paid out, by program and by place
- The Government Accountability Office, for audits, reviews and legal decisions on federal spending
- Appropriations committee reports from the House and Senate, including the tables that list earmarks by member
- The Federal Register, for agency rules, notices and executive orders
The checks follow a few plain standards:
- Numbers come with context. A dollar figure means little unless you know the fiscal year, the program and whether it is a request, an appropriation or an actual outlay.
- Claims match their sources. Articles say when something is confirmed, when it is reported by others and when it is still uncertain.
- Dates are visible. Each article shows when it was published and when it was last updated, so you know how current it is.
The site does not test anything in a lab. The checking is research: reading the primary documents and comparing what officials say with what the record shows.
Corrections and outdated information
Budget facts go out of date fast. Deadlines move, bills change between drafts and estimates get revised. When information on the site goes out of date, it is either updated or clearly marked as history.
Mistakes are corrected openly. If an article gets something wrong, the editors fix it and add a note on the page saying what changed. Errors are never quietly deleted. If you spot one, write to the editors and include the source that shows the right figure or fact.
How the site makes money
PB Spending Watch is free to read. There is no paywall and no subscription.
Once the site reaches about 5,000 visits a month, it will show display ads to cover its running costs, such as hosting and upkeep. Advertisers have no say over what is covered or how.
Some things the site will not do for money:
- It does not sell links.
- It does not accept guest posts or sponsored articles.
- It takes no payment for coverage, from anyone.
Independence
PB Spending Watch is fully independent. It is not affiliated with any political campaign, party, advocacy group, lobbying firm or government agency, and it takes no money from any of them. Choices about what to cover, and what to say about it, are made only by the editors.
Who the site is for
The site is written for anyone who wants to understand federal spending without wading through hundreds of pages of legislative text. That includes curious taxpayers, students, teachers, local reporters, and people who simply want to know why the government keeps coming close to shutting down. You do not need any background in budgeting or politics to follow the coverage. When a term needs explaining, the article explains it.
Contact the editors
You can reach the PB Spending Watch editors by email at contact@porkbusters.org, or through the contact page. Write in to report an error, ask about a story or suggest an earmark or spending question worth a closer look. Corrections that come with a source get handled first.