Earmark Requests from Obama Transportation Secretary

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: Poring over the mammoth, $410 billion “omnibus” spending bill released by the House Appropriations Committee this afternoon, an interesting name pops up as one of the more prolific earmarkers: Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. The earmark requests were submitted early last year, when LaHood, R-Ill., served as a member of the House Appropriations Committee — long before he could have been thinking about serving in President Obama’s Cabinet. Members of that committee traditionally dominate the requests for funding for specific projects. Those requests are made public by the appropriations committee. To choose just a few of LaHood’s voluminous earmark requests, which are scattered throughout the documentation posted online: Research funding for the Midwest Poultry Consortium; medical equipment funding for Memorial Medical Center in Springfield, Ill.; construction funds for a cancer research lab at the University College of Medicine at Peoria; “exhibit design” help for the Lakeview Museum in Peoria; planetarium equipment for the Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences; “public safety communications equipment” for the Logan County Sheriff’s Department; equipment for the Lincoln, Ill., Police Department; research funding for the “National MarketMaker Network” at the University of Ilinois at Urbana-Champaign; “crop production and food processing research” in Peoria; biodiesel and E85 storage tanks and dispensers for the City of Peoria; “green building design and implementation” at Bradley University; and funding for the Soybean Disease Biotechnology Center and the Livestock Genome Sequencing Initiative in Champaign, Ill. My colleague Jonathan Karl has a more complete look at some of the earmarks included in the House Appropriations Committee draft of the omnibus spending bill.