WASHINGTON — One hundred million dollars for an airport in Mobile, Alabama. Tens of thousands for upgrades to a police station in the tiny town of Milton, West Virginia. Hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to Arkansas to deal with feral swine. Stuffed inside the sprawling $1.5 trillion government spending bill enacted in March was the first batch of earmarks in more than a decade, after Congress resurrected the practice of allowing lawmakers to direct federal funds for specific projects to the
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., talks to Mary Engle, Executive Vice President, Better Business Bureau, before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security holds hearings to examine COVID-19 fraud and price gouging, Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022 on Capitol Hill in Washington. 9 min read
“Earmarks can help members feel like they have a stake in the legislative process, in a legislative world where power is really centralized with party leaders,” said Molly E. Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “They need some skin in the game, and earmarks — community project funding, whatever you want to call them — help members feel that efficacy and remind them why they came to Washington.
— The places that received large amounts of money either were well-populated states or had representatives on the committees that oversee spending. The states that claimed the most funding were California, Alabama, New York, South Carolina and Missouri. “It’s a question of who do you want to do the earmarks,” he said. “You want the administration, the White House, to do them? Or do you want to do some yourself? They’re going to be done.”
The limits were not enough for some lawmakers who were wary of the optics of claiming federal money for parochial goodies. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said he had refrained from requesting projects, despite his seat on the Appropriations Committee, because he had not had enough time to educate voters about the nuances of the process.
On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., secured $104 million in earmarks but still voted against the spending package, citing its omission of disaster aid for his state. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said she and her staff stuck pins in a state map to make sure there was a fair distribution of projects across counties and small towns.
“I would be even happier if we were No. 1,” Bustos said. “I’ve been in Congress for a little over 9 1/2 years now, and it makes me wish that we had been able to do this for the last 9 1/2 years.”