FOXNews.com - Tracking Your Taxes: Earmarks to Nowhere

FOXNews.com - Tracking Your Taxes: Earmarks to Nowhere: "There was the $50 million Congress handed out in 2004 for an indoor rainforest in Iowa at the behest of Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a self-described fiscal conservative. As the local newspaper in Coralville joked, for that much money, 'we could send the whole town on a rainforest vacation.'"

"Another project that crashed and burned came out of San Diego, Calif., where an entrepreneur convinced another politician he had the idea of a lifetime: a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) troop-carrying airplane. The military didn't want it, but Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., did. Year after year, Washington went along, appropriating more and more million-dollar earmarks. Finally, after 20 years and $63 million taxpayer dollars, the farthest the DP-2 Vectored Thrust Aircraft ever got was two feet off the ground."

"Another $70 million of taxpayer money was blown on a wind tunnel in Montana. The MARIAH project wasn't requested by the Pentagon or NASA, but Congress funded it for more than a decade, usually with a $7 million earmark requested by the Montana delegation.

'The Air Force, (the) leader in hypersonic testing and technology, lost interest in 2004, so appropriators moved the program to the Army,' said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.. 'The Army has no official requirement for this capability and published a report in 2005 stating their (lack of interest) in the program. To date, the Army has no plans to fund the MARIAH wind tunnel effort, as they have stated in their budget documents. That hasn't kept Congress from pouring more than $70 million into it, with no discernable return.'

If a project doesn't make economic sense, how does it survive year after year? The answer often lies in the power of the sponsor, and over the last 50 years there has been no more powerful appropriator than West Virginia Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd. By some accounts, Byrd himself has spent $3 billion dollars in taxpayer money. More than 40 projects in West Virginia that have been paid for with tax dollars are named after him."

"So far, taxpayers have invested almost $2 billion in the massive highway, which ends in a field. Virginia has no plans to ever actually connect a companion highway to West Virginia's 25-mile stretch of concrete, leaving the monster as yet another monument to waste, or one of the more expensive examples of how Congress works."