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January 7, 2009

Victory for our summer interns!

Posted: 01:05 PM ET
CNN INTERNS

CNN INTERNS

Well they aren't summer interns anymore. Actually most of them are probably working real jobs, but their work two years ago for CNN's investigative team finally has brought the entire congressional earmark process into the open.

In the summer of 2007, we assembled a team of interns to ask every senator and every member of Congress to disclose their pork barrel requests, known as earmarks. The requests in the past have been done in complete secrecy. Most of us found out about pork barrel spending only after it was included in budget bills.

We upset a lot of politicians with that survey. Most members of Congress and the Senate never even bothered to call us back. But a few did and thought it was a good idea for us to post their requests online.

Now they all will have to do it....because the two people in charge of doling out the money, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Rep. David Obey (D-Wisconsin) issued new rules today (you can read them below). Basically, if you want the people’s money, you’d better tell the people why, online and in advance.

I can't help but think our summer interns have brought a little summer sunlight to the dark world of congressional spending.

For more info see this release.

Filed under: Drew Griffin • Politics • Special Investigations Unit


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zach   February 16th, 2009 12:59 pm ET

that's great!

unfortunately it's only half the battle. you upheld your part, but the burden now falls on the american people to be interested in political spending and look at money requests online. most people don't even know about this.

on top of that, people will have to learn how they can affect things in washington. we write ourselves off as meaningless pawns in this grand scheme, but we actually have quite a few ways to get through to our representatives. it's just a matter of rolling up your sleeves and spending a couple hours researching issues and calling up your representatives.

i worry that we've become a nation of complainers. our legislation is falling apart with corruption and so we complain about it. when asked to do something about it, we complain that we can't. when given the opportunity to do it, we complain that we're too insignificant. there's always something that we complain about rather than just fixing it all up.


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