Under reforms announced in March, House members have to publicly declare the earmarks they’re requesting from the Appropriations Committee. Most of the requests have now been published and Wash​ing​ton​Watch​.com has assembled a state‐​by‐​state catalogue of links to Members’ earmark requests.


Getting earmark requests published is progress. Getting them published in uniform, machine‐​readable formats would allow the public to do really thorough oversight of all the projects that Members of Congress think federal taxpayer dollars should go to.


In December, we had a policy forum called “Just Give Us the Data!” where we explored some of the current issues in government transparency.