What is Earmark Watch?
Earmark Watch is an experiment in distributed research. We have provided a space on the Web that allows users to investigate and evaluate earmarks — spending provisions requested by individual members of Congress that target taxpayer dollars to specific projects and recipients — in two ways. First, they associate some basic information with the recipient of an earmark — including each recipient’s Web and physical addresses, whether the recipient has lobbied Congress or whether its executives have donated money to federal election campaigns. Second, they can provide additional research and commentary on each earmark, to help determine the extent to which members of Congress earmark funds to meet important local needs in their districts or states. Earmark Watch is a forum for citizen scrutiny and oversight of the thousands of earmarks inserted into federal spending measures. We hope to provide both quantitative data–a count of the number of earmark recipients that lobby Congress or h
