PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: No dip in earmarks despite White House push for transparency.

Transparency requirements pushed for by the Obama administration have not changed the total spending on earmarks for 2010, according to a study by a group critical of the practice.

The amount of money directed by lawmakers in 2010 to specific projects back in their districts adds up to $15.9 billion, according to the analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense. . . . As a presidential candidate, Obama called for cutting earmarks down to their 1994 levels, or about $8 billion. He has since called for a competitive bidding process for earmarks going to for-profit companies, a move that has been adopted by the House but not the Senate.

Worse yet, the earmarks are vote-buying tools to promote the passage of huge spending bills. It’s not the amount of spending the earmarks embody, it’s the big-government corruption that they enable.