How we calculate

Every number on PORKER comes from a written rule. These are the rules, in plain English. The same rules apply to every member.

Pork totals

"Pork" means earmarks: specific projects, in a specific place, that a member of Congress asked to fund. The House calls them Community Project Funding and the Senate calls them Congressionally Directed Spending.

• We count only projects that were funded in a spending law that passed, not requests that were never funded. (A separate "in play" list shows House projects still moving through committee.)
• A project counts for every member listed as requesting it, but each member is credited only with their own share of the money. When several members share a project, the amount is split among them using the official request tables, so a shared project is never counted once per co-requester and members' totals don't overlap. We show solo and shared dollars separately, and a member's largest projects show both their share and the full project amount.
• Each fiscal year stays separate. We don't add years together.
• "Typical" means the middle member of that chamber, including members who requested nothing.
• Some spending bills are missing because their official tables aren't published or are scanned images we can't read reliably yet. Each page lists which bills are missing.
• Party isn't used anywhere in the pork numbers.

"Broke with party"

For each recorded floor vote, we check how most Democrats voted and how most Republicans voted.

• If the two parties' majorities voted opposite ways and a member voted with the other party's majority, that counts as breaking with their party.
• Votes where both parties' majorities voted the same way, or where either party was evenly split, don't count either way.
• If a member missed the vote, or isn't a Democrat or Republican, it doesn't count.
• If an official vote record is incomplete or its numbers don't add up, we skip that vote.
• We can only count votes from Congresses whose roll-call votes are loaded on PORKER. Older Congresses aren't included yet.

Missed votes

The share of the chamber's recorded floor votes in this Congress where the member is listed as "Not Voting." We count every recorded vote in their chamber, even ones held before a newer member was sworn in. "Typical" is the middle member of the same chamber.

The Countdown: chance of becoming law

Every Congress ends with a deadline. Any bill that isn't law by then dies. The Countdown gives each bill still alive a score from 1 to 95. It's our rough estimate, not a prediction, built from points:

We only include bills and joint resolutions that affect everyday life (taxes, health, jobs, housing, crime, immigration and similar). We leave out ceremonial ones, bills that failed a vote, and bills with neither 10 cosponsors nor a recorded vote.

WOW tags

WOW tags are badges that flag something unusual about a bill. Each one comes from a fixed rule and shows the real numbers behind it. Ceremonial bills, like naming a post office, are left out of the speed and rarity comparisons.

"Typical" times are the middle value for laws from the 113th to 118th Congresses (2013–2024), comparing like with like where we have enough examples.

Questions

If a number looks wrong, email support@porker.vote with the page and we'll check it against the source.