Question 1: How many earmarks did Maryland’s senators request this year?

 

Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen requested 139 earmarks worth $161 million.

 

The biggest earmark by far is $50 million for the Navy to clean up environmental waste in Charles County.  

 

Others are a bit more questionable.

 

$200,000 to support local games of squash. Some viewers might have not even realized that’s a sport.

$811,000 for Baltimore City to buy a “mobile music lab bus” for underserved youth.

$429,000 to build a Horses Helping People Center. “Equine-assisted therapy.”

 

Question 2: How many earmarks did the House request?

Rep. Kweisi Mfume actually requested the least money of all Maryland house members. 15 earmarks for $27 million. A lot of money for local parks. New computers for police department. Construction at MARC train station in West Baltimore.

Dutch Ruppersberger represents a small portion of Baltimore too. He requested almost $40 million for 15 earmarks, the maximum allowed. Again, less money than most Maryland reps.

 

A lot of that is for science and technology centers to upgrade their equipment. $9 million for construction at Martin State Airport.

 

Question 3: Earmarks help bring a lot of federal funds to projects around Maryland. But why do OpenTheBooks and other critics want them banned?

 

Earmarks are often called the “currency of corruption.” In the past, Congress members have been caught using them to appeal to special interests and essentially buy votes. Obama and Sen. Tom Coburn helped ban them in 2011, but that only lasted 10 years.

 

Today there’s more rules to force transparency and prevent conflicts of interest. But these are still local projects that often can, and arguably should, be funded locally. Some of them were already denied state/local funding because the state didn’t think it was a good use of money.

 

And the transparency isn’t perfect. The Senate posted their earmark requests this year in separate blurry PDF files with differing formats. It took our team hours to convert them to Excel files and get a dollar total. It shouldn’t be that difficult - Congress should be open about how many earmarks they request.

 

Question 4: Give us the broader picture. Are Congress’ earmark requests larger this year, or is spending going down? 

 

Remember none of these have been signed into law yet and the dollar total will likely decrease.

 

Last year Maryland’s senators only requested $98 million. This year they’ve requested $161 million. We'll see if anyone forces them to reduce that total.

 

And the $31 billion request for all of Congress is large. Last year they requested $25 billion and passed $16 billion.

 

House Republicans are contributing the most. Thirty-three of the 40 largest earmark requests in the House came from Republicans, including the four largest. They outspent House Democrats by about 50%.