I guess some things will never change.

The House Defense Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2008 allocates the Department of Defense $459.6 billion, $3.5 billion less than the president’s request but nearly $40 billion more than last year’s appropriations. The bill does not provide the $141 million requested by the White House for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is slated to appear in an emergency supplemental in September.

The committee disclosed 1,337 earmarks worth $3 billion. This year is the first in which earmarks were disclosed under new House rules mandating that representatives identify their earmarks in letters to the committee certifying they have no financial interest in the project. The report accompanying the bill contained a chart listing projects and sponsors, but not the amounts of the earmark: TCS searched the report and added the value of the earmarks to our accompanying database. TCS will soon release an updated version of the earmark database listing undisclosed earmarks, earmark beneficiaries and scanned images of the letters, which are not available on the committee’s web site.

The lion’s share of the earmarks can be found in the research, development, test and evaluation (RDTE) budget account. The largest of these include $21.8 million for “electronic combat and counterterrorism training” by FATS Inc. of Georgia, sponsored by Jack Kingston (R-GA), and $19 million for an “affordable weapons system,” sponsored by Duncan Hunter (R-CA). Hunter also added $1.5 million to the drug interdiction account for a southwest border fence—much less than the $8 million he requested in the defense authorization bill for the same project. The committee disclosed 26 intelligence-related earmarks, though the cost was not revealed in the bill’s report. These included the National Drug Intelligence Center, a project long supported by appropriations chairman John Murtha which Senator Tom Coburn recently sought to eliminate in an amendment to the Senate Defense Authorization bill. Murtha disclosed $150.5 million worth of earmarks, while Defense Subcommittee Ranking Member C.W. Bill Young (R-FL) piled on $117 million in earmarks.

Pork