Congress is once again staring down the barrel of a government shutdown, but this time the real drama isn’t about closing national parks—it’s about whether politicians can resist the siren song of bringing home the bacon.
In a plot twist that surprises absolutely no one who has watched Washington for more than five minutes, fiscal conservatives who spent months thundering against earmarks—those special project funds lawmakers slip into bills for their districts—managed to axe exactly one.
The rest, a cool $16 billion worth, sailed through mostly unscathed in the massive funding package now awaiting Senate approval by Friday to keep the lights on at federal agencies.
Well, the government stays open, which means park rangers keep ranger-ing, air traffic controllers keep not crashing planes, and Social Security checks keep arriving on time. But for the deficit hawks, it’s a quiet surrender: earmarks are back in vogue like bell-bottoms in a thrift store revival.
What started as a principled stand against “the currency of corruption” has morphed into a shrugging acceptance that, hey, if everyone’s doing it, why fight city hall—or in this case, Capitol Hill?
Republicans, who banished earmarks over a decade ago amid Tea Party fury and corruption scandals, rediscovered their charm once they reclaimed the majority. Democrats had reintroduced them in 2021 under the polite alias “community project funding,” complete with rules and a 1 percent cap to keep things civilized.
Now, with GOP control, the floodgates are open wide. The nearly $1.3 trillion package brims with thousands of these directed funds, from road repaving to police cruisers to shelter upgrades.
Hard-liners like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a Freedom Caucus stalwart, admitted the obvious with weary candor. When most House members and a big slice of the Senate crave these goodies, resistance is futile. “Members like to do it,” he noted dryly, as if confessing that politicians enjoy being politicians.
Proponents insist earmarks greased the wheels for bipartisan deals that finally produced actual budgets for the Pentagon and domestic agencies after nearly two years of stopgaps. Without them, leaders might still be negotiating in circles.
Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska, who netted nearly $30 million for his district—including millions for roads, three-quarters of a million for cop cars, and half a million for a youth shelter—called it proof the process works. “We’re bringing this in under budget,” he boasted, sounding like a shopper proud of a coupon haul.
The Freedom Caucus tried one last stand, demanding votes to strip hundreds of Senate-added projects. The effort flopped spectacularly. More than 70 House Republicans voted to keep the earmarks intact.
Even some conservatives pointed fingers at needing Democratic votes in a divided Congress—because nothing says fiscal restraint like blaming the other team for your own shopping spree.
In the Senate, where filibuster math demands bipartisan buy-in, holdouts delayed action for weeks. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida highlighted the old unanimous GOP vow to shun earmarks—a promise honored mostly in the breach.
One bright spot for purists: they did kill a single $1 million earmark from Rep. Ilhan Omar for a Minnesota community organization. The address listed? A restaurant. Sometimes even the earmark machine has standards—or at least a sense of smell for trouble.
As lawmakers tout their local wins ahead of midterms, the message is clear: principle is nice, but potholes don’t fill themselves and voters remember who brought home the funding.
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