August 25, 2009 4:46PM # 35,000 Earmark Requests — Just 50 Reps to Go By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) --- SHARE WashingtonWatch.com’s project to collect congressional earmark data [continues to make great strides](http://www.washingtonwatch.com/blog/2009/08/25/earmark-hunting-less-than-50-reps-to-go/). Over 35,000 earmark requests are in the database, and fewer than 50 representatives remain on the “[wanted” list](http://www.washingtonwatch.com/blog/2009/08/09/wanted-earmarks-the-list-is-shrinking/). It’s not all good news. Even some appropriations committee members [published their earmark disclosures as scanned PDFs](http://www.washingtonwatch.com/blog/2009/08/25/the-earmark-disclosure-hall-of-shame/). That’s transparency in name, but not in spirit. Cato’s December policy forum on government transparency was titled “[Just Give Us the Data](https://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5475)!”, and scanned PDFs are not data.… On the [Wash​ing​ton​Watch​.com earmarks home page](http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/earmarks/), the earmark requests collected so far are mapped by state and sortable by member of Congress and senator. Visitors can vote and comment on earmark requests, or edit a wiki article about requests, adding personal knowledge about projects they are familiar with. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).