Moving to wrap up work for the year, the Senate on Saturday gave final approval to a temporary budget bill to keep the government running until March, a plan that included well over two thousand "earmarks" worth an estimated $6.6 billion dollars.

The bill included not only temporary funding for the government, but also wrapped in three budget bills for the new fiscal year, which begins on Wednesday.

The move was needed since the Democratic-led Congress had not passed a single budget bill for next year.  Now they will be able to say they had a better record than the GOP led Congress in 2006, which only approved two spending bills before breaking for the elections.

The list of most of the "earmarks" - or "Congressionally directed spending" as it's called on Capitol Hill - has mostly been made available now in electronic form.

The defense spending bill contains most of the over 2,000 earmarks in this legislation.  You can find that part of the Continuing Resolution on the internet at

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/Z?r110:H24SE8-0090:

When you get to that page, you will see "Division C - Department of Defense Appropriations Act Fiscal Year 2009."  To get to the earmarks, use your "find" function on your browser to search for the word "disclosure" which will take you to a lengthy list of earmarks.

The list shows the name of the project, how much money is funded, and then the name of the lawmaker in the House or Senate who sponsored the project.

The first one listed is $2.4 million for the  "Air Warrior-Joint Service Vacuum Packed Life Raft (AW-JSVPLR)" which is sponsored by Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young of Florida.

Young is the ranking Republican on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and a former Chairman of the Committee when the GOP ran Congress.  

If you search for "disclosure" a second time, your browser will take you to a list of earmarks in the portion of the bill dealing with Homeland Security spending.

The first item is $22.3 million for the National Center for Critical Information Processing and Storage, which is located in Mississippi.

Sen. Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, who just happens to be the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, is the sponsor of that item.

Search for "disclosure" a third time and you will see the earmarks from the portion of the bill that funds Military Construction projects.

Those projects are broken down by state.  You will see that most of them have "The President" as a sponsor, which means they were specifically requested by the Bush Administration in the fiscal year 2009 budget request.

Projects that do not have "The President" included mean that they were added by lawmakers and put into this bill.

I will let you search through them to see what you think!