WASHINGTON, March 22 (UPI) -- The DOD's 2006 appropriations act contains nearly 3,000 "earmarks" -- accounts specifically funded by Congress and often a source of pork-barrel spending.
The figures are included in a new report from the Congressional Research Service which looked at FY-2006 spending bills across the entire government. It found that as the defense budget has risen annually, so did the amount set aside for earmarks, proportionally.
In most cases, earmarks eat into the budget requests made by the Pentagon, as Congress generally trims accounts to add others.
The amount of money tied up in the Defense Department budgets by earmarks has remained at around 2.3 percent of the total discretionary amount in the budget, no matter how high that number climbs. In 2006 the discretionary budget -- that is, the accounts Congress can affect, as opposed to entitlements like health care -- was about $399.4 billion.
In fiscal year 1994, there were just 587 earmarks to the Defense Department appropriations bill worth $4.2 billion. By 2002 that number had increased to 1,409 individual earmarks worth $7.2 billion, and then to 2,847 earmarks worth $9.3 billion this year.
"That the DOD appropriations legislation has been stuck at this 2.3 percent suggests a conscious, not a random, pattern. Could it be that the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have settled on a fixed percentage for their pork?" said Winslow Wheeler, a defense budget analyst with the Center for Defense Information, a watchdog organization in Washington.
In some cases, earmarks are not "pork" as it is traditionally defined -- that is, projects added specifically to benefit a congressional district or particular entity. Sometimes the military services request additional funds for specific accounts after the Office of the Secretary of Defense has edited their budgets before submitting them to Congress.
Shaping the federal budget is Congress' primary power and check on the executive branch, and earmarks are a way of exerting its influence.
