Congress is rolling back into town this week to finish up the nine spending bills that remain and a few other housekeeping chores. As the year closes, we will no doubt be seeing a gargantuan 'omnibus' bill, combining all of the leftover spending bills into one. While omnibus spending bills are fabled vehicles for pork, few realize that the most egregious examples of parochial pork-barreling politics have already come and gone, and they rode out of town on what most consider the third rail of the spending debate: the $416 billion Defense Appropriations bill.

The enviable bang representatives get for their buck when buying pork at the Pentagon is demonstrated by the average size of each earmark. The average earmark in the Defense Appropriations bill is $4.5 million, compared to $1.35 million in last year's omnibus and $3.3 million in this year's six-year transportation reauthorization bill. This year's final version of the bill contains $12.3 billion in earmarks, exceeding even the $10.7 billion total found in last year's omnibus bill, which combined seven spending bills. No single appropriations bill can compete with Defense Appropriations for earmarking extravagance.

As with all earmarking, there's a clear method to Congress's madness in the defense bill. The number and size of handouts a state receives is governed by congressional hierarchy. The chairman and ranking member of the defense appropriations subcommittee will get the lion's share of the bill's goodies. Other members of the defense appropriations subcommittee will do nearly as well. Next in the pecking order are committee members, and then everyone else, with preference given to party leaders.

Like clockwork, this year's defense appropriations bill delivers. In the Senate, states with members on the subcommittee got an average of $178 million. The full appropriations committee averaged $151 million, Senate leadership pulled in an average of $145 million, and everyone else averaged $76 million. Differences in the House are even more dramatic: $313 million for subcommittee members and $169 million for committee members compared to just $19 million for those outside the committee. States with leadership members in the House netted $412 million while their colleagues' states garnered just $127 million on average.

The biggest winners are predictable: in the Senate, Ted Stevens (R-AK), chair of the committee, gets the third largest amount and easily tops the per capita rankings, with Hawaii, home of ranking member Daniel Inouye (D-HI), close behind. Senator Stevens sent home $431 million, equivalent to $687 for every man, woman and child in Alaska.

In a few weeks, TCS will release a complete database of congressional earmarks in the Defense Appropriations bill, allowing a first-ever glance at where our defense money goes and why this should be the most, not least, scrutinized bill to pass through Congress. That the funds go to one of our nation's most crucial endeavors only makes the case stronger for more rigorous oversight than that given to any other bill.

That the vast majority of earmarks in the bill are so clearly a result of congressional power rather than need is a strong indictment of the appropriations process. With national priorities being co-opted for congressional gift giving, it's no wonder that we're on a crash course with massive deficits. The Defense Appropriations bill is a showcase for the out-of-control earmarking process that wastes tens of billions each year. At some point, this spending madness has to end.