PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: All about the earmark game:

It’s common for lawmakers to ask for many, many more earmarks than they can possibly get in order to go to bat for as many constituents as possible. The real list, the one that tells which projects a lawmaker wants most, is far more secret.

Freshman Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., for example, requested 66 earmarks totaling about $172 million in the upcoming appropriations round. Last year, Boyda obtained $20.7 million in solo earmarks, along with almost $18 million more that she requested with other lawmakers.

Hiring lobbyists helps. They know which buttons to push, and have easier access to key lawmakers on the Appropriations committees and their aides. Lobbyists ride herd on earmarks in ways that out-of-town officials and executives can’t.

The flip side is that lobbyists cost money. The Rochester Institute of Technology, for example, pays $280,000 a year to The National Group, a Washington lobbying firm, to seek earmarks. Over 15 years, the firm says it has helped RIT obtain $60 million for research and education projects.

Read the whole thing. And there’s more here:

The practice of decorating legislation with billions of dollars in pet projects and federal contracts is still thriving on Capitol Hill — despite public outrage that helped flip control of Congress two years ago.

More than 11,000 of those “earmarks,” worth nearly $15 billion in all, were slipped into legislation telling the government where to spend taxpayers’ money this year, keeping the issue at the center of Washington’s culture of money, influence and politics. Now comes an election-year encore. . . .

Millions of the dollars support lobbying firms that help companies, universities, local governments and others secure what critics like Republican presidential candidate John McCain call pork-barrel spending. The law forbids using federal grants to lobby, but lobbyists do charge clients fees that often equal 10 percent of the largesse.

Earmark winners and their lobbyists often reward their benefactors with campaign contributions. For many members of Congress, especially those on the Appropriations committees, such as Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., campaign donations from earmark-seeking lobbyists and corporate executives are the core of their fundraising.

Rules forbid lawmakers from raising campaign funds from congressional offices, but members and their aides sometimes find ways to skirt them.

Read this one, too.