By Robert Pear
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
September 26, 2008
WASHINGTON – As Congress tried to cobble together a plan to spend huge sums on a financial bailout, lawmakers also moved yesterday toward final approval of an omnibus spending bill with more than 2,300 pet projects, including a $2 million study of animal hibernation.
Many lawmakers had promised to go on a diet, but their appetite for the pet projects, known as earmarks, has returned as Congress finishes its work for the year and Election Day looms less than six weeks away.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group, calculates that earmarks account for $6.6 billion of the omnibus bill's cost, which totals more than $630 billion.
