WASHINGTON — President Bush often denounces the propensity of Congress to earmark money for pet projects. But in his new budget, Mr. Bush has requested money for thousands of similar projects.
He asked for money to build fish hatcheries, eradicate agricultural pests, conduct research, pave highways, dredge harbors and perform many other specific local tasks.
The details are buried deep in the president’s budget, just as most Congressional earmarks are buried in obscure committee reports that accompany spending bills.
Thus, for example, the president requested $330 million to deal with plant pests like the emerald ash borer, the light brown apple moth and the sirex woodwasp. He sought $800,000 for the Neosho National Fish Hatchery in Missouri and $1.5 million for a waterway named in honor of former Senator J. Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat.
At the same time, Mr. Bush requested $894,000 for an air traffic control tower in Kalamazoo, Mich.; $12 million for a parachute repair shop at the American air base in Aviano, Italy; and $6.5 million for research in Wyoming on the “fundamental properties of asphalt.”
He sought $3 million for a forest conservation project in Minnesota, $2.1 million for a neutrino detector at the South Pole and $28 million for General Electric and Siemens to do research on hydrogen-fuel turbines.
The projects, itemized in thousands of pages of budget documents submitted last week to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, show that the debate over earmarks is much more complex than the “all or nothing” choice usually presented to the public. The president and Congress both want to direct money to specific projects, but often disagree over the merits of particular items.
The White House contends that when the president requests money for a project, it has gone through a rigorous review — by the agency, the White House or both — using objective criteria.
Congressional leaders said they would focus more closely on items requested by the president this year. “The executive branch should be held accountable for its own earmark practices,” said the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Democrats agreed that “the large number of presidential earmarks deserve the same scrutiny and restraint” as those that originated in Congress.
Mr. Bush has often derided Congressional earmarks as “special interest items” that waste taxpayer money and undermine trust in government. Congress, he said, included more than 11,700 earmarks totaling almost $17 billion in spending bills for the current fiscal year.
But some of those earmarks were similar or identical to ones included in the 2009 budget that Mr. Bush sent Congress last week. For example, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, obtained an earmark of $1.5 million last year to deal with the emerald ash borer, a beetle that attacks trees, lawns and crops. Mr. Bush now wants more money to fight that insect.
A similar pattern is evident at the Bureau of Reclamation, an Interior Department agency that provides water and power in 17 states. Congress and the White House both support construction of a huge water project known as Mni Wiconi, which would deliver water from the Missouri River to rural South Dakota.
At the behest of South Dakota lawmakers, Congress earmarked $38 million for the project last year. In its budget justification for 2009, the bureau requests $779 million for more than 150 specific projects, including $26 million more for the one in South Dakota........
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