His disdain for earmarks is familiar to anyone involved in the congressional appropriations process. So it wasn’t all that surprising that Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, when he was chairman of a Senate subcommittee on government operations two years ago, asked the inspectors general at a number of agencies to review their earmarks and report back on how they were managed and whether they conformed to the agency’s goals and missions.

What’s perhaps more surprising is the response he got back. Requests from congressional chairmen generally carry great weight, and about 15 agencies responded — although sometimes more than six months to a year after receiving Coburn’s letter. Only the Transportation Department inspector general expressed any outrage over earmarks, asserting that the thousands of pet projects lawmakers had ordered up had robbed money from worthier highway and aviation programs.

The Defense Department, reviewing its fiscal 2007 appropriations, found some earmarked projects and purchases it didn’t need. The agency was assigned to fulfill 2,656 earmarks, so the inspector general had to sample: of the 70 projects worth more than $15 million that were reviewed, two were considered inconsistent with the department’s priorities. Of the 219 smaller contracts reviewed — those worth less than $15 million — five did not fit.

As for the rest of the responses that have filtered in from the agencies, Coburn and his aides haven’t said much about them — mainly, it appears, because the agencies didn’t find much to report that would make Coburn have something to get upset about.

“Commerce bureau officials we interviewed were in agreement that all of the FY 2006 earmarks were consistent with the Commerce mission and strategic goals,” that department’s inspector general reported.

NASA’s inspector general found that nine of the 42 earmarks his office evaluated did not align with the agency’s priorities. But the office felt it necessary to elaborate on that finding.

“We recognize that there is vigorous debate on the utility and advisability of earmarks as an appropriate exercise of congressional power,” the IG said in a report delivered to both Coburn and NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. “A finding of lack of alignment between an earmark and NASA priorities . . . is no more determinative of the appropriateness of congressional action than a finding of alignment. In either instance, Congress, or members thereof, caused the redirection of budgetary resources or added specificity on how to apply those resources that was different from the executive branch’s proposal.”

The Education Department, in fact, commented in response to its IG’s report that it had little discretion in funding congressional earmarks, although it considered them “an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars.”

The reports themselves cost money. The Agriculture Department assigned two auditors full time for five months, plus fieldwork by four other staff members. The Environmental Protection Agency reported spending about $283,509 to determine that four out of 86 earmarks did not meet its environmental protection mission.

Coburn and his staff, though, say the lack of concern about earmarks in report after report doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. The agencies, they say, are just pulling their punches in order not to offend Congress. “Agency heads are often reluctant to criticize the hand that feeds them,” said Coburn’s press secretary, John Hart. “We weren’t pleased with the level of openness.”

Coburn lost his chairmanship in January 2007 when Democrats regained control of the Senate, though Hart said he has continued to investigate earmarks.