| For Immediate Release | Daytime contact: Alexa Moutevelis: (202) 467-5318 |
| August 15, 2006 | After hours contact: Tom Finnigan: (202) 253-3852 |
Washington, D.C. – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today joined a coalition of groups and websites to launch an interactive online database of the more than the 1,800 earmarks in the House version of the fiscal 2007 Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (H.R. 5647). The effort aims to make government more open and accountable by getting the public directly involved in tracking and researching earmarks.
The coalition includes Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, Human Events Online, National Taxpayers Union, the blog Porkbusters.com, Sunlight Foundation, Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog, The Washington Examiner, and Townhall. The organizations collaborated to create a single earmark database, with each presenting the data and engaging taxpayers in slightly different ways. Each group has called on its respective members, readers, and visitors to do on-the-ground fact-finding on the earmarks.
Earmarks are often secretly slipped into large spending bills without debate or competition. There is no requirement that important information be disclosed, such as the member of Congress who requested a project, a justification for the project, or the specific group that receives the funding.
“Waste and abuse are the inevitable result of a budget process that lacks accountability and transparency,” CAGW Vice President for Policy David Williams said. “With more than 10,000 earmarks in last year’s federal budget, decentralization is the best approach for exposing boondoggles, conflicts of interest, and other shenanigans. Our goal is to hold members of Congress accountable for their spending choices and to highlight the need for earmark reform.”
CAGW’s database, Exposing Earmarks, is at www.cagw.org. For every earmark, the database gives a description, cost, location, and an opportunity to submit comments.
“Exposing Earmarks is a new strategy for harnessing the power of the Internet to combat the waste and corruption in Washington,” Williams continued. “Think of it as an earmark CSI, where taxpayers help to figure out whose fingerprints are all over these spending items.”
Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.