The 2019 Congressional Pig Book has unearthed 282 earmarks costing taxpayers $15.3 billion in the appropriations bills funding the federal government in fiscal year (FY) 2019. The cost is more than half of the record of $29 billion in earmarks set 13 years ago – an ominous uptick in congressionally-directed, special interest spending. This also marks the seventh time that members of Congress violated the earmark moratorium adopted in FY 2011 in order to waste vital taxpayer dollars on parochial and non-essential pet projects.
Among the egregious examples of pork-barrel waste highlighted in the 2019 Pig Book are $13.8 million to manage wild horses and burros, $9 million to quarantine fruit flies, and $863,000 to eradicate brown tree snakes in Guam.