GovernmentExecutive.com

Despite all the recent hand-wringing over congressionally directed spending earmarks, local project requests for fiscal 2009 continue to flood into the House Appropriations Committee.

In fact, Wednesday's deadline to submit requests generated such volume that the panel's system crashed and the deadline had to be extended to Monday at noon.

"As a result of the massive influx of requests being submitted today, the Appropriations Committee website is experiencing unavoidable access and processing delays," committee staff wrote in an e-mail to lawmakers' offices informing them of the extension. "In order to accommodate Member offices attempting to input data, any request submitted by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, March 24th, will be considered as having been submitted 'on time' for purposes of consideration by the Committee."

House GOP leaders challenged Democrats to impose an earmark moratorium for the year; such a move was discussed last week but never materialized, in part because the Senate rejected a similar proposal 71-29.

In the interim, the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats may be hedging their bets.

COMMENTS

• Add up all together all the earmarks and you don't approach the money wasted on foreign wars. At least earmarks don't slaughter people. Dan Posted March 26, 2008 12:34 PM
• Requests for earmarks are nothing new to either party or any elected official. This occurs even at local government level where sports teams or other groups often solicit funding for events or to attend competitions. I, for one, do not approve of this as a use of my local taxes any more than I approve of my income taxes funding presidential libraries for every President. As for the House Appropriations Committee, the volume of requests represents pent up demand for authorized federal programs and the fact that Congress often does not appropriate the authorized funding nor does it allow the agencies to evaluate and judge which projects fit an authority and best serve the nation when comparing benefits. This has created the present situation where the only possibility of getting funding for some projects, no matter how great the benefits, can only come through earmarks. You can play the blame game and dream of tar and feathers but nothing is going to change until the public overwhelms their elected officials with their protests. Not likely. Mike Posted March 25, 2008 9:15 AM
• Surprise. Surprise. A democrat congress broke a promise to end earmarks. I am continually amazed that people expected the democrats to reduce spending and cut earmarks. No matter how bad the republicans are at spending and earmarks, and they are bad, the democrats are worse. Just the facts. conservative Posted March 21, 2008 12:33 PM