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Appropriations
Under the rules of the House of Representatives for the 113th Congress, appropriation requests from individual members will not be taken. I actually believe that this is the best policy. I have long advocated for elimination of the “earmarking” process. At the same time, when earmarking was available, I felt that I could not simply deny my district the opportunity to be competitive when seeking to address its genuine needs. I therefore created the only open, transparent, citizen-run process in Congress for the purposes of evaluating requests from a Congressional district. To see the history of this two-year experiment in open government, you can review the 2010 and 2011 appropriation requests that are also on this site. The Citizens Oversight Panel that reviewed these requests was composed of distinguished persons from throughout our community, and they served admirably in finding worthy projects and in their recommendations.