FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- April 11, 2006              

Contact: Ed Frank (703) 408-0572 or Annie Patnaude (574) 315-3396

Nationwide “Ending Earmarks Express” Visits Charleston

Group Says Taxpayers Shouldn’t Pay $6M for MountainMade.com

CHARLESTON – The Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s nationwide “Ending Earmarks Express” bus tour visited Charleston, WV, today for a stop outside U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd’s office.  According to the Wall Street Journal, since 2000, Sen. Byrd and U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan (1^st Dist. – WV) have helped secure $6 million in earmarks for the Mountain Made Foundation, which operates MountainMade.com, an Amazon.com-style e-commerce website where artisans sell their products.  The Journal also reported in a front-page article on Friday that Congressman Mollohan is the subject of a federal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the earmarks he secured for the Mountain Made Foundation and other West Virginia not-for-profit groups.

“We completely support hand-crafted art and using the Internet to sell products in the free market, but we don’t think federal taxpayers should subsidize MountainMade.com any more than they should subsidize Amazon.com or eBay,” said Americans for Prosperity Foundation President Tim Phillips.  “But even if you think this is a wise use of scarce federal dollars, it’s important to realize that the practice of earmarking makes it much easier for truly wasteful pet projects like the Teapot Museum in North Carolina or the $223 million Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska to slip through. Let’s end earmarks and have an open debate about how we should spend our tax dollars.”

The Ending Earmarks Express kicked off on Capitol Hill in Washington last Friday, and stopped yesterday in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio.  The Express is also traveling this week to sites in Frankfort, Ky., St. Louis and Columbia, Mo., and Gulfport, Miss.  A full schedule and map, including detailed information about specific earmarks that will be highlighted at each stop, is available at www.EndingEarmarksExpress.com.  The site is also being regularly updated with photos and news from the road.

The number of earmarks has skyrocketed from 958 in 1996 to 15,877 last year, tallying up to $47.4 billion in the 2005 budget, according to the Congressional Research Service. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s goal is to educate taxpayers about the problem of earmarks and mobilize them in support of more transparency and accountability in the appropriations process.  Phillips said these reforms would also build momentum for the group’s larger goal of reining in all forms of wasteful spending in the federal budget.

AFPF supports reforms such as a requirement that conference reports be filed and publicly available at least 72 hours before floor debate begins, the creation of a new point of order allowing extraneous individual earmarks to be removed without gutting the whole piece of legislation and the closure of lobbying and ethics loopholes that unfairly favor government lobbyists who often use our tax dollars to lobby for even more our tax dollars in the form of earmarks.

Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) is a nationwide organization of citizen leaders committed to advancing every individual’s right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFPF believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFPF educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org

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