The final numbers are in, and as expected President Barack Obama was unable to keep his promise to hold earmarks to less than $7.8 billion a year, the level they were at before 1994.

An earmark is a requirement that money approved by Congress be spent in a specific way at the request of a lawmaker. Critics have long argued that earmarks are likelier to serve the interest of a particular congressional district or constituent group than the national good. That's why Obama promised to curb their use.

On Feb. 17, 2010, Taxpayers for Common Sense, a leading watchdog group, released its study of congressional earmarking for fiscal year 2010. For that fiscal year, the group says, appropriations bills contained 9,499 congressional earmarks worth $15.9 billion. The group's "apples-to-apples" comparison found that earmarking increased slightly from the prior year -- from $15.6 billion to $15.9 billion.

So the group's study found that the amount earmarked in fiscal year 2010 was more than twice as large as it was in 1994.

After we ran our previous assessment of this promise, several readers said we should have taken into account inflation since 1994 in judging this promise. But looking closely at what Obama said, we concluded that adjusting for inflation is irrelevant to an accurate analysis. The exact promise was that "Barack Obama is committed to returning earmarks to less than $7.8 billion a year, the level they were at before 1994." The way this was phrased, the operative amount is $7.8 billion a year, not whatever the current value of 1994's earmarks are.

And according to the Taxpayers for Common Sense study, the value of earmarks in fiscal year 2010 was well above $7.8 billion. So our rating remains Promise Broken.