Open the Books, a watchdog group, found that Congress’ far-left “Squad” has received $224 million of earmark requests over the past two years.

The Squad is made up of eight progressive House members — Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Jamaal BOWMAN, both from New York; Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota; Ayanna Pressley, of Massachusetts; Cori Bush, of Missouri; Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan and Greg Casar, of Texas. Summer Lee, of Pennsylvania, also makes the squad.

Washington is addicted to spending tax payer money. The Squad seized the opportunity after House Republicans voted secretly to reinstate earmarks two years ago. The democratic socialists are responsible for earmarking $220 million of your money in the past two years.

Spending on earmarks, or “pork barrels”, is a way to use federal funds for projects that are important to a legislator’s home state or district.

Each member of lower chamber may request up to 15 earmarks. This means that the Squad can request as many as 120 pork projects for the 2024 budget. According to the analysis they made 108 demands.

The Squad’s earmark requests fell into three broad categories: clean energy (including renewables), environmental justice, and diversity.

Projects included a new building and funding for the Billion Oyster Project, which prohibits people from eating or fishing oysters on the Hudson River in Ms. Ocasio Cortez’s District.

A second project involves funding for the San Antonio College Empowerment Centre, which includes an assistance program for undocumented students in Mr. Casar’s district. A green tech park is another project that will be funded in Mr. Bowman’s district.

Open the Books discovered that the first six bills of the twelve that will fund the federal government in 2024 include 6,582 earmarks totaling $13,78 billion. The projects are split almost evenly between Republicans, and Democrats.

“It’s immoral for Republicans or Democrats to earmark taxpayer money, when every penny of it has been borrowed in order to pay off the national debt of this country and its future generations,” Mr. Andrzejewski stated.

Congress has struggled to fund basic government operations this year. The House and Senate approved a $1,2 billion spending package last week. The $1.2-trillion spending package stopped a partial government shutdown and completed the federal budget for fiscal 2024 which ends on September 30.

Total approved government expenditures for the current fiscal period were $1.66 trillion, with a projected budget deficit of $1.6 billion.