If Congress’ appetite for earmarks has been greatly reduced by recent scandals and public pressure, it is not especially evident in the nation’s largest domestic spending bill.

A Congressional Quarterly analysis of the conference report on the measure, released Monday night, counts more than 2,200 earmarks and special projects totaling more than $1 billion. That is about seven-tenths of one percent of the bill’s total discretionary spending of $150.7 billion. The bill would fund the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education in fiscal 2008, plus several independent agencies, including the Social Security Administration.

Lawmakers in charge of the legislation have estimated that they cut the volume of earmarks in the measure by 40 to 50 percent compared to fiscal 2005, the last year that the bill contained earmarks. But spokeswomen for the House and Senate Appropriations committees did not respond to a Tuesday morning request for the committee’s own count of earmarks.

The House was expected to adopt the conference report tonight, sending the huge package to the Senate. Democratic leaders said they wanted to give members at least 24 hours to read the 853-page document, which was not filed until Monday evening. Republicans said that was hardly enough time, and Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, criticized Democrats for lumping together the Labor-HHS-Education measure with a spending bill for military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Democrats figured that President Bush would have trouble vetoing veterans’ health care in order to kill the Labor-HHS-Education measure, which he opposes, but Bush has insisted he will veto the entire package.