By MANDY SMITHBERGER
Congressional pledges to save money by cutting earmarks may not be resulting in the promised cost savings after all, according to Congressional researchers.
A June 15th report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) compared the House's recently passed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (FY 2012) to FY 2010 and found that while there were fewer "member-sponsored funding initiatives" (known to most people as "earmarks"), they were going to cost about the same altogether and that each earmark was more expensive, on average:
- The FY2010 bill included 372 earmarks each with a value of less than $100 million, providing a total of $1.37 billion (for an average value per earmark of $3.7 million); and
- The FY2012 bill included 98 committee additions with a value of less than $100 million, providing a total of $1.30 billion (for an average value per addition of $13.3 million).
Mandy Smithberger is a POGO investigator.
Image by Flickr user adamendoza, used under Creative Commons License.
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