Peninsula Daily News News Services
WASHINGTON — In a year marked by anti-earmark fervor, lawmakers still managed to insert $8 billion worth of pet projects into the massive spending bill now wending its way through Congress.
Chief among them is Sen. Patty Murray, D-Bothell, who got $219 million in earmarks into the $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill released Tuesday, according to preliminary analysis by the Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group.
That amount once again appears to make the Washington Democrat and a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee one of Congress’s top earmark sponsors.
Murray’s chosen projects are sprinkled throughout the spending bill, which would fund the federal government through September.
Along with her Washington state colleagues, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Mountlake Terrace, and Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, Murray directed $3.5 million for the Madigan Army Medical Center Trauma Assistance Program in Tacoma.
A $350,000 earmark for “Cool Season Legume Research” bears the names of Murray and five other sponsors.
Responding to growing outrage over government spending and ethical concerns, House Democrats this year banned earmarks to for-profit companies.
The House Republicans followed that by swearing off all earmarks, pressuring their reluctant GOP counterparts in the Senate to adopt a nonbinding ban of their own.
Only the Senate Democrats have yet to formally renounce the practice.
Despite all the pledges of reform, the $8 billion in earmarks in the FY2011 spending bill is down only 20 percent from the year before, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Some members of Congress are now turning their backs on their own earmarks and saying they’ll vote against the bill
Murray’s spokesman said she’s sticking to her earmarks “because they will help create jobs and boost local economies throughout Washington state.”
Dicks, who helped to announce the House Democrats’ pledge against for-profit earmarks, continues to seek earmarks, particularly for defense projects.
For instance, Dicks inserted a $4.96 million earmark for Puget Sound Littoral Environmental Sensing Network.
A Port Townsend company, Intellicheck Mobilisa, had been the lead contractor on that project since 2005, receiving $18 million in earmarks secured by Dicks.
But now the money’s recipient is listed as the University of Washington, which for the past couple of years had teamed up with Intellicheck Mobilisa on the wireless project.