{"id":525008,"date":"2010-04-12T18:37:50","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T22:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=82043"},"modified":"2010-04-12T18:37:50","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T22:37:50","slug":"congressional-earmarks-decline-sharply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/525008","title":{"rendered":"Congressional Earmarks Decline Sharply"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/omb\/blog\/10\/04\/12\/Changing-the-Trend-on-Earmarks\/\">reports<\/a> on his blog that earmarks have declined sharply, down 17 percent in volume and 27 percent in dollar value between 2009 and 2010:<span id=\"more-82043\"><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>For too many years, the practice of congressional earmarking  continued virtually unabated. During the 10-year period that ended in  2005, according to the Congressional Research Service, the number of  earmarks skyrocketed, increasing by more than 400 percent and reaching a  level of more than 16,000. This increase was particularly troubling  because all too often, earmarks are an easy vehicle for special interest  deal-making \u2013 inserted into congressional spending bills without filter  for merit, need, priority, or any scrutiny by the public, the media, or  other members of Congress.<\/p>\n<p>The Administration has just completed its <a id=\"tb_external1\" href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/omb\/blog\/10\/04\/12\/Changing-the-Trend-on-Earmarks\/#TB_inline?height=220&amp;width=370&amp;inlineId=tb_external&amp;linkId=1\">count  of the earmarks<\/a> contained in the Fiscal Year 2010 appropriations  bills, the last of which the President signed into law in mid-December.   Although more needs to be done, the news is encouraging: earmarks are  down by double-digit percentages&#8230;.These reductions  build on the progress that has been made on earmarks since 2006,  reductions prompted by a series of reforms that then-Senator Obama  helped to write \u2013 including bringing more transparency and disclosure to  the process.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/omb\/blog\/10\/04\/12\/Numbers-Count\/\">later post<\/a>, he accounts for discrepancies between his numbers and those produced by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxpayer.net\/\">Taxpayers for Common Sense<\/a>, the federal budget watchdog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, reports on his blog that earmarks have declined sharply, down 17 percent in volume and 27 percent in dollar value between 2009 and 2010: For too many years, the practice of congressional earmarking continued virtually unabated. During the 10-year period that ended in 2005, according [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}