Pig (Congress)man, Ha Ha, Charade You Are…

Citizens Against Government Waste has released its annual Congressional Pig Book, which details in all its lardy goodness the stomach-turning volume of pork-barrel spending in these United States. From the intro:

This year's list includes: $13,500,000 for the International Fund for Ireland, which helped finance the World Toilet Summit; $6,435,000 for wood utilization research; $1,000,000 for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative; and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C.

This year, there was good news and bad news. For fiscal 2006, appropriators stuffed 9,963 projects into the 11 appropriations bills, a 29 percent decrease over last year's total of 13,997. Despite the reduction in the number of earmarks, Congress porked out at record dollar levels with $29 billion in pork for 2006, or 6.2 percent more than last year's total of $27.3 billion. In fact, the total cost of pork has increased by 29 percent since fiscal 2003. Total pork identified by CAGW since 1991 adds up to $241 billion.

Go whole hog here.

Reason's Tim Cavanaugh drives off last year's biggest pork project, Alaska's bridge to nowhere, here.

Obscure headline allusion explained here.

Obscure tie-in to earlier post: Shouldn't the World Toilet Summit be held in Belgium, what with all the chocolate, beer, and Smurfs?