Washington, D.C. – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released its preliminary analysis of the Senate version of the fiscal year (FY) 2012 Commerce and Justice, and Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill.  The bill allocates $59.5 billion, $694.5 million more than the amount provided in FY 2011 and $4.7 billion below the President’s FY 2012 budget request. 

Unfortunately for taxpayers, the bill contains $157.9 million for three earmarks that represent a substantial increase over the budget request, thus meeting CAGW’s long-established criteria.  These three earmarks represent a 99.4 percent decrease from the 529 earmarks contained in the FY 2011 Senate bill; the $157.9 million represents a 57.6 percent decrease from the $372.5 billion in FY 2011.  The dollar total of the earmarks in the Senate bill represents a 57.1 percent decrease from the $368.4 million in earmarks added by the House. 

The Senate should be applauded for decreasing earmarks since FY 2011 and refusing to include any earmarks for the Community Oriented Policing Services program, which has been a prime repository for pork in years past.  However, any earmark is one too many given the current earmark moratorium and the fiscal state of the nation.

The three earmarks added by the Senate to the Commerce bill are as follows:

• $70,700,000 for Economic Development Assistance programs, which supply grants under the Economic Development Administration (EDA).
• $67,235,000 for EDA.  Created as part of the Johnson Administration’s “Great Society,” EDA ostensibly provides grants and loans to create jobs and growth in “distressed” regions of the country.  A 1999 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that EDA spending likely had no effect on employment, and EDA has frequently been cited as an example of redundancy in the federal government.  A March 2011 GAO report pointed out that EDA is one of 86 federally funded development agencies.  Providing more than $137 million in additional funding for a fundamentally flawed and duplicative agency such as EDA demonstrates the extent of the spending problem in Washington.
• $20,000,000 for the Federal Cyber Space Scholarship for Service program.

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