Most of the $7,155,000 in Minnesota earmarks listed below were never paid out as earmarks. In February 2007, Congress funded fiscal 2007 through a full-year continuing resolution (H.J.Res. 20, Public Law 110-5), which gave the earmarks written into committee reports no legal effect. Congress then stopped earmarking in 2011. The practice came back in 2021…
The anonymous senator behind the hold turned out to be two senators. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) both acknowledged holds. Once their names were public, both holds were lifted, the Senate passed the bill on September 7, 2006, and President George W. Bush signed it into law on September 26, 2006. The database…
n unknown number of senators have blocked legislation to create a public, searchable Web site of all federal grants and contracts. Senate rules permit any senator to anonymously block consideration of a bill on the floor, effectively killing the measure.” The measure is not necessarily dead because the offending senator or senators might withdraw their…
The secret hold did not last. Within weeks of this 2006 post, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) confirmed that he had placed a hold on the bill, and Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) also came forward. The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) then passed both chambers, and President George W. Bush signed it on…
The senator who blocked the Coburn-Obama spending transparency bill in 2006 turned out to be two senators, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). Once their holds came out, the bill passed, and it became the law behind USAspending.gov. Earmarks, the main target of the PorkBusters campaign, were put under voluntary Republican moratoria in Congress…
All 19 of Rep. Jeff Flake’s 2006 anti-earmark amendments failed, and none got more than 92 votes. Congress banned earmarks in 2011 through party rules, then brought them back in 2021 for fiscal 2022. In the House they are now called Community Project Funding and in the Senate Congressionally Directed Spending, with member names attached,…
In 2006, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) forced the House to vote on 19 earmarks one at a time. Every one of them survived, and Rep. Betty McCollum (DFL-MN) voted to keep all 19. After that, Congress turned against earmarks. In 2011 both chambers adopted a moratorium, and it lasted a decade. Earmarks came back in…
Metro got its money in the end. The $1.5 billion that Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) sought for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) became law in October 2008, inside the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA, Public Law 110-432). The deal paid $150 million a year in federal money, and the…
The Club For Growth has a big post about Congressman Jeff Flake’s 19 anti-pork amendments and how they have every House member on record regarding their positions on earmarks (a process through which members of Congress steer federal funding to local projects without going through competitive grant procedures or other objective mechanisms – source). I…
from the blogosphere Washington Post:Over the past decade Vibration & Sound Solutions Ltd., a small Alexandria defense contractor, has received a steady flow of federal contracts to work on “Project M” — $37 million in all from annual “earmarks” by congressional supporters such as Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.).Project M, a technology involving magnetic…
