Here’s an interesting graphical representation of where the federal earmarks go, courtesy of the Sunlight Foundation. The image shows earmarked federal dollars on a per capita basis by state.
I had to scrunch this image down a little. But as you can see, one fact stands out pretty clearly: Alaska bags a lot of earmarks. The runner up states tend to be smallish states. And that’s a clear effect of the disproportionate weight small states get in the senate. But, still, Alaska gets almost four times more in federal earmark dollars than the next runner up, Hawaii.
Another interesting way to look at this is, look at the top three states: Alaska, Hawaii, and West Virginia. All smallish states but each also have senators that have been in office, respectively from 1968 (Stevens), 1963 (Inouye) and 1959 (Byrd).
All this said, I think earmarks in many ways have gotten a bad name. Earmarks seldom change or in theory at least never change the amount of money being spent. It simply takes the decision-making power over how money gets spent out of the hands of federal bureaucrats and puts it into the hands of legislators. It’s a system rife with potential for abuse. But there’s nothing wrong with it in itself. If a big federal transportation bill goes through you probably want your representative to do his or her best to make sure some of that money is allocated for making sure the bridge in your city gets fixed. The problem of course, or one of them, comes when he or she is earmarking money for some project on the other side of the country because it’ll make millions for some campaign contributor who’s bought your member of Congress.
