Clearly, there are earmarks going to organizations that don't need taxpayers' help and funding to places where the local community or better operations would make fleecing hardworking Americans unnecessary:

  • Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) for $650,000 for feral swine management
  • Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who each got a $500,000 earmark for local theaters
  • Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) for $500,000 for preservation of the Nansen Ski Jump Historic Site in Milan, New Hampshire
  • Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) for $1,000,000 for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
  • Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) for $2,000,000 for the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas
  • Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) for $3,000,000 for the Palo Alto Museum for renovation of the Roth Building in a city with median household income of $174,003
  • Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) for $4,200,000 for the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station
  • $240,000,000 for modernization of the M1 Abrams, including $175,000,000 to upgrade 20 tanks, which the Pentagon opposes
  • Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) for $569,000 to remove derelict lobster pots from the Maritime Aquarium
  • Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) for $1,500,000 for the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia
  • Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) for $150,000 for an oyster aquaculture and restoration initiative at the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit group with net assets of $7.9 billion
  • $1.9 million for three earmarks funding aquariums that have combined net assets of $144.7 million