Title: Earmark Watch

Source/Sponsoring Agency: Sunlight Foundation; Taxpayers for Common Sense

URL: http://earmarkwatch.org/

Date Checked: 9/14/2008      Status: Active

Date Annotated: 9/14/2008

Topics: Politics

Other keywords: Congress; Earmarks; Oversight; Appropriations; Public spending

Contents: Earmark Watch is a project of Sunlight Foundation and Taxpayers for Common Sense, non-partisan organizations dedicated to increasing public awareness of government activities. Earmark Watch contains a database of spending appropriations (earmarks) which House Resolution 6 and the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 require Senate and House members to disclose; this covers earmarks contained in three bills: the House and Senate versions of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bills, and the House version of the Defense appropriations bill. Users can search a database of these earmarks by state, sponsor, description, or recipient. When users search by one of the four criteria, the search engine returns the text of relevant earmarks. Users cannot refine their searches beyond the selected criteria, and cannot search multiple criteria at the same time. Generally, the search results do not provide much information beyond the text of the earmarks matching the selected criteria. Earmark Watch’s content may improve in the future; it is based on a Wikipedia-like model which allows registered users to contribute information about and comment on specific earmarks.

Author of Annotation: L. Buechner