WASHINGTON (TND) — An agency headed by a senator's wife got hundreds of millions of dollars through the $1.7 trillion omnibus package.

Founder and CEO of Open the Books Adam Andrzejewski joined The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat Friday morning to discuss the details. $200 million from the bill went to the Appalachian Regional Commission, run by the wife of Sen. Joe Manchin.

“Gayle Manchin makes nearly $170,000 a year, which is about three times the median income in the state of West Virginia,” Andrzejewski said. “...It was a project of John F. Kennedy. And it was started for a very good purpose, and that was to bring the economics of Appalachia, one of the poorest areas in the country, up to par with the rest of the country. So it's been around for 57 years, and all of a sudden, hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into this agency."

This is a $5 million increase from last year.

Andrzejewski says the commission began with a noble cause but hasn't made much of an impact of the past few decades.

"There's a scorecard on their website, and their scorecard says that there's four counties that have achieved the economic objective over the last 57 years," Andrzejewski said. "That's 1% of 423 counties within these 13 states that spans from southern New York to northern Mississippi, a massive geographic area where 26 million people live and work. Okay, so 4% success rate."