Washington, D.C. - Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released the 2007 Congressional Pig Book.  The Pig Book is CAGW’s annual compilation of all the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. 

The 2007 Pig Book identifies 2,658 pork projects at a cost of $13.2 billion in the Defense and Homeland Security Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2007.  Only two of the 11 appropriations bills were enacted by Congress and the remaining nine were subject to a moratorium on earmarks.  CAGW has identified $254 billion in pork since 1991.

“Although the Pig Book is leaner this year, there is still much to chew through,” CAGW President Tom Schatz said.  “Legislators only had two bills into which they could stuff their pork, but they still managed to bring home the bacon.”

CAGW’s website www.cagw.org features a complete database of projects, while the Pig Book Summary profiles the most egregious examples.  Highlights in the defense bill include:  

* $1,190,000,000 for full funding of 20 F-22A fighter jets, which the Government Accountability Office criticized as unnecessary and out of date;

* $5,500,000 for the Gallo Center to study the effects of alcohol and drug abuse on the brain;

* $1,650,000 to improve the shelf life of vegetables;

* $1,350,000 for the Obesity in the Military Research Program; and

* $1,000,000 for a telescope searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

 “While taxpayers should celebrate a reduction in the number and cost of pork-barrel projects, there is still much work to be done to ensure members of Congress do not return to their piggish ways in the future,” Schatz concluded.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.