One of Congress’ primary responsibilities is to create an annual budget for our government and appropriate money to all branches and agencies, such as the Department of Education or the Department of Defense.

Within most of the appropriations measures for a single fiscal year, certain funds can be set aside for a specific purpose or project, if requested by a Member of Congress.

In order to bring more transparency to this process, I am making my complete list of Fiscal Year 2009 federal investment requests available to the public and encouraging my colleagues in Congress to do the same.

Please note that this is a list of all of my requests for funding through the authorization and appropriations process, not what has been selected for funding. My colleagues on the Appropriations subcommittees will decide what projects will be funded.

While it’s likely that no more than a few of these requests will be filled, they are all important to my district and I will continue to advocate for all of them.