St. Louis News Blog

Porkbusters.org, a blog that covers transparency in government spending, recently released the Earmark Reform Index, which ranks U.S. senators on their propensity to support wasteful government spending (or "pork," as it's commonly known). To compile the data, the group looked at 12 house votes between 2005 and 2007, opportunities where senators had the chance to say yea or nay to government spending reform.

According to the Porkbusters (who conducted the study in conjunction with Examiner Newspapers), the authors "consulted knowledgeable Senate insiders to insure that each of these votes represented a real chance to make a difference for taxpayers."

The results paint Missouri's senators as decidedly un-kosher. Ranked on a scale of 0 to 100:

Kit Bond (R): 8.33 (tied for second-worst overall)
Claire McCaskill (D): 16.6 (tied for third-worst)

Republican Jim Talent, the Senate lawmaker McCaskill unseated last year, notched Missouri's best score, a 25. Porkbusters classified the state as a whole as a "Top Porker," with an average score of 16.6.

At the other end of the spectrum are New Hampshire's John Sununu and Oklahoma's Tom Coburn, both Republicans and both topping the chart at 100.

-Keegan Hamilton