Hat tip to The Liberty Papers for calling attention to the annual Pig Book by Citizen's Against Government Waste .

Notable rankings by posted by Stephen at Liberty Papers:

The top 5 porkers in the Senate were:

#1 Cochran (R): 241 projects costing $892.2 million.
#2 Stevens (R): 150 projects costing $469.4 million
#3 Shelby (R): 206 projects costing $464.5 million
#4 Landrieu (D):161 projects costing $458.5 million
#5 Byrd (D): 111 projects costing $386 million

The three senators running for president where ranked as follows:

#13 Clinton (D): 281 projects costing $296.2 million
#70 Obama (D): 53 projects costing $97.4 million
#96 (tied with 4 others) McCain (R): 0 projects costing $0.00

In the House the top 5 porkers were:

#1 Wicker: 43 projects costing $176.3 million
#2 Young, Bill: 87 projects costing $169.5 million
#3 Murtha: 73 projects costing $159.1 million
#4 Abercrombie: 29 projects costing $153.6 million
#5 Hoyer: 98 projects costing $149.1 million

So, the top 5 senators, all by themselves, had 869 projects totaling over $2.6 billion. Nice. Congrats to you fine people on your success. If only they were all like you. (YIKES!)

On state totals, Alaska is once again the undisputed king of pork with an astounding $555.54 of pork per capita...well more than double the total of second place Hawaii. Even in simple, raw numbers, Alaska still ranks very high at 5th place...just edged out by Florida in 4th. But most of those states have high populations.

Other notables:

Pork peaked in 2006 (appropriated in 2005) and has dropped since then. Jeez, I wonder why...but don't worry, it's climbing again.

Projects are up 542% in the last 10 years.

As for our 3 Presidential hopefuls, say what you will about McCain, at least he's as good as his word on wasteful spending. Now if we can just get him to broaden his definition of wasteful spending (hint:foreign policy), he might make an OK President....maybe.