What a week! So we are slogging through the defense spending bill. From our counting of the earmark disclosure tables at the end of the conference report we have found 2,049 earmarks worth $4,982,309,000. As they say on the infomercials, “But wait, there’s more!” There are some provisions formerly known as earmarks that have surprisingly lost their earmark status in the final bill. For instance, the two $240M provision for a 2nd engine for the Joint Strike Fighter were originally considered an earmark in the Senate – with member disclosure – but no more. So to for the $588M for the Virginia Class Submarine. Now these are big ticket items, but there very well may be more earmarks in hiding so both of our numbers could be ticking up in the coming hours.

Which brings me to our next phase. We are busily putting all of the conference earmarks into a single spreadsheet with the House and Senate earmarks. There are several consolidations and cuts, but you will see an interesting story of who kept their funding and who went by the wayside. Also, many House and Senate members who didn’t get earmarks in the original bills are taking credit for them in conference.

Tomorrow morning we should have a simple spreadsheet available that mirrors the table. And after that the fully functional database with all the earmarks – House/Senate/Conference with the House earmark disclosure letter information that we posted earlier this week.