The Year of the Earmark Restraint?

The final version of the 2010 Defense appropriations bill debated in the Senate on Friday contains a mere 1,720 earmarks worth $4.2 billion. The number is down 17 percent and the value dropped 14 percent from the fiscal 2009 bill, the green eyeshade folks at Taxpayers for Common Sense reported.

Top earmarkers included Senate Defense appropriations chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, who notched up 37 marks worth $198.2 million, and ranking member Thad Cochran, R-Miss., who jammed in 45 favors worth $167 million. In the House, Defense appropriations chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., racked up 23 earmarks worth $76.5 million, while the ranking member, C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., pushed through 36 worth $83.7 million.

Tech earmarks included $2 million that Murtha steered to ITT for Highlander Electro-Optical Sensors, drones designed to sniff out airborne chemical and biological threats.

In a related earmark, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, favored Southern Methodist University in Dallas with $2 million to develop "Hi-Tech Eyes for the Battlefield," a project to equip minidrones and individual soldiers with tiny, flat digital cameras to track battlefield threats.