Sunday, August 23, 2009
Daniel Inouye
Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) is not ashamed of the federal money he funnels back to his home state. “It may please you or it may not please you,” Inouye told a group of Hawaiian business and social representatives recently. “I’m the No. 1 earmarks guy in the U.S. Congress.” According to the Sunlight Foundation, an earmark is “a line-item that is inserted into a bill to direct funds to a specific project or recipient without any public hearing or review.”
Whereas some consider “earmark” a dirty word, Inouye is proud of the hundreds of millions of dollars he has delivered to one of the smallest states in the nation. Some of the earmarks Inouye won approval for in fiscal year 2008 include the Hawaii Federal Health Care Network ($25 million), Maui Space Surveillance System Operations & Research ($23 million), the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial ($20 million), Pacific Airborne Surveillance and Testing ($15 million) and the Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions Programs ($11.5 million).
-Noel Brinkerhoff
'No. 1 Earmarks Guy' Calls Them Transparent, Beneficial (by Erin Miller, West Hawaii Today)
Sen. Daniel Inouye Earmarks Requested (Legistorm)
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