FY 2010 Earmarks for South Dakota: $148 Million

Taxpayers for Common Sense has posted its Fiscal Year 2010 Earmark Database. South Dakota's take in earmarks, by my sorting of the spreadsheet: $147,824,150.

Remember, that's not total federal funding; that's just the little Christmas ornaments Senator Johnson, Senator Thune, and Representative Herseth Sandlin (and President Obama!) were able to hang on the tree. (Oh, and one from North Dakota Senator Dorgan, who was nice enough to request $150K for a Corps of Engineers investigation on the James River.)

And just which of our Congresspeople were responsible for how much of those earmarks?

House sponsor	Amount	Senate sponsor	percentage of total SD earmarks
Herseth Sandlin	$360,000		0.2%
	$8,105,000	Johnson, Tim	5.5%
	$5,750,000	Thune	3.9%
	$150,000	Dorgan	0.1%
Herseth Sandlin	$19,381,550	Johnson, Tim	13.1%
Herseth Sandlin	$0	Thune	0.0%
Herseth Sandlin	$87,947,600	Johnson, Tim; Thune	59.5%

Six out of every ten earmark dollars were requested by our entire Congressional delegation, Democrats and Republican working together to bring home the bacon. And that nice fellow in the White House was nice enough to request more than $20 million more, mostly for the Fort Randall and Big Bend dams.

The ten biggest earmarks for South Dakota:

Amount	Project	Location	Purpose	Agency	Earmarkers H=Herseth J=Johnson T=Thune P=President
$32,200,000	MNI Wiconi Project		Energy and Water	Bureau of Reclamation	HJTP
$14,500,000	Add/Alt Deployment Center	Ellsworth Air Force Base	Military Construction	Air Force	HJTP
$11,604,000	Fort Randall Dam, Lake Francis Case, SD		Energy and Water	Corps of Engineers	P
$9,383,000	Big Bend Dam, Lake Sharpe, SD		Energy and Water	Corps of Engineers	P
$7,890,000	Joint Forces HQ Readiness Center Supplement	Camp Rapid	Military Construction	Army National Guard	HJT
$3,200,000	Alternative Power Technology for Missile Defense	Brookings	Defense	Research, Development, Test & Evaluation	HJT
$3,000,000	Advanced Electronics Rosebud Integration	Rosebud	Defense	Research, Development, Test & Evaluation	HJT
$3,000,000	Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Lower Brule Sioux, SD	Lower Brule Sioux	Energy and Water	Corps of Engineers	JT
$3,000,000	SD Highway 63 Resurfacing, SD		Transportation-Housing and Urban Development	Federal Highway Administration	T
$2,750,000	Sun Grant Initiative (SD)		Energy and Water	Department of Energy	HJ

The earmarks also include $500K for suicide prevention on the Rosebud, $400K for the Brant Lake sewer system, and $1.2M for developing "stabilized hemoglobin wound healing" for the Army. Once again, I welcome Dr. R. Blake Curd and my Tea Party friends to tell me which of these programs and any of the other earmarks are among the great evils of the Republic that South Dakota should reject.

Some notes from the national earmark scene:

• The Senator and Representative who won the most earmarks are both Republicans.
  
• Of the top five from each house, five were Republicans, five were Democrats.
• Republicans did claim fewer earmark dollars, taking just 34% of the partisanly assignable dollar value in this budget, compared to 44% in FY 2009.
• 58 Representatives claimed no solo earmarks; 13 were Dems, 45 were GOP.
  
• 24 Senators claimed no solo earmarks; 16 were Dems (including John Kerry), 8 were GOP (including John McCain).
  
• Earmarks went down by number, from 10,363 to 9,413.
• Earmarks went up by dollar, from $15.6 billion to $15.9 billion.
• Earmarks went up, barely, as a percentage of the total budget, from 0.44% to 0.45%.