In 2007, President Bush requested $103 billion for an "emergency supplemental to pay for the troop surge and other war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then, Democrats added another $21.3 billion to this, not because they thought the war needed more money, but these were added as earmark. An earmark is a stipulation inserted into a bill that requires congress to direct portion of the funds be given to a particular project or recipient. It is a way to fund a project through legislation rather than going through a general agency fund. They could be anything, and that they were. For example, $35 million was for spinach producers, and $60 million for salmon fisheries.
One of the most famous earmarks ever, was in 2005 when Alaska Senator Ted Stevens sponsored an earmark to spend $200 million connecting mainland Alaska to Gravina island that contains the Ketchikan International airport and 50 residents. The funding for this bridge was originally included in the 2006 omnibus spending bill covering transportation, housing and urban development, but in October of 2005, Senator Tom Coburn sponsored an amendment that would remove these funds. His amendment would remove the funds and diverted them to Hurricane Katrina disaster relief. In a bi-partisan manner, the Senate defeated Coburn's amendment by a whopping 82-15 margin. Public funding for the "bridge to nowhere" would stand, and so would the right of congress to insert earmarks. Congress may have supported earmarks, but the public was fed up. They were fed up with a ballooning federal budget and pork-barrel spending. Republicans voters began to complain and President Bush was forced to weigh in. In his 2007 sate of the Union address Bush did not call for the elimination of earmarks, but he did urge congress to end the practice of secretly adding earmarks and to "expose every earmark to the light of day and a vote in Congress".
"Next, there is the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour, when not even C-SPAN is watching. [Laughter] In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of the earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate. They are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You didn't vote them into law, I didn't sign them into law, yet they're treated as if they have the force of law. The time has come to end this practice. So let us work together to reform the budget process, expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in Congress, and cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half by the end of this session."In September of 2007, then Governor Sarah Palin cancelled plans to build a bridge to Gravina Island due to budget short-falls and lack of interest in Congress to provide additional funding. The project was cancelled, but work on the road to the bridge continued with federal funding. In 2008, CNN dubbed this the "road to nowhere". Governor Palin's claim that she "told Congress, thanks but no thanks on the bridge to nowhere" became a 2008 campaign issue. Palin claimed to reject Federal funding of the bridge project, but many others pointed out that she was a proponent of the bridge during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=24446
http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/congress/2007/earmarks-earmarks-earmarks.html
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/8/alaska-kills-bridge-to-nowhere-that-helped-put-end/?page=all
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
http://images.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/kpiof9-310731web5large.jpg
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/02/images/20070206-2_p020607pm-0168-515h.jpg
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