Despite proclamations, earmarks continue

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.