158 House Republicans Voted Against Banning Earmarks

Omnibus talks advance on spending more

Below are highlights from my op-ed, titled “It’s Time for Congress to Ban Earmarks” that appeared in The National Review on December 1, 2022.

Photo by Rogier van den Berg on Unsplash

Last month, Republicans won majority control of the House of Representatives after price inflation hit a 40-year high, squeezing family budgets and creating economic uncertainty. An overwhelming majority of voters — 78 percent, according to a pre-election Politico poll — listed inflation and the economy as their top motivating concerns.

Republicans now have an opportunity to put an end to the excessive spending that’s contributing to rising prices. Banning earmarks should be their first step.

Earmarking contributes to excessive spending and is a distraction from more fundamental governing responsibilities, such as reining in deficit spending and conducting oversight of the executive branch. Instead of throwing earmarked money at their districts, lawmakers should cut unnecessary and wasteful spending and review government programs to ensure that federal funding meets the needs of their constituents.

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When Republicans gained a House majority after the 2010 midterms, party leaders banned earmarks, citing examples of corruption and wasteful spending. In 2010, then-House Republican leader John Boehner  wrote that earmarks “have become a symbol of a broken Washington, and an entire lobbying industry has been created around them.”

I saw the hordes of lobbyists who lined up outside congressional offices this past September, pushing their agendas with members of the House and Senate. And they’ll be lining up again this December, like squeaky wheels begging for grease from a lame-duck Congress. The earmark ban lasted for an entire decade, before Democrats revived the practice, re-labeling earmarks in 2021 as “congressionally directed spending.” Once the floodgates were open, both parties quickly remembered how valuable earmarks are for personal political gain, and Democrats and Republicans re-engaged in this horse-trading.

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As inflation continues to eat away at American families’ purchasing power, this outgoing Congress is proposing to spend $16 billion on earmarks in FY 2023 appropriations bills.

Requested projects include a new $2.75 million Ohio River Museum in Marietta, Ohio, a city of 13,551 residents; a new fleet of electric buses for the Solano County Transit service based in California, at a cost of $2 million; a new $3 million baseball grandstand for the City of Pittsfield, Mass.; and an additional $2 million for “critical renovations” at Forsyth Library, located on the campus of Fort Hays State University in Kansas — after the library already received a whopping $17 million for said renovations in FY 2022.

You can read the full piece over at The National Review.

Policy Update: Last week, House Republicans voted 52-158 against a proposed earmark ban. The vote took place in a closed-door session during a conference rules meeting. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), who had offered the amendment, wrote in the Washington Times, preceding the vote: “The new Republican majority needs to make a dramatic, concrete and credible statement that business as usual in Washington is over. Is there a more powerful statement it can make than to swear off the wasteful and corrupting practice of congressional earmarking?” It appears that it’ll take more outside pressure to change most lawmakers’ minds about voluntarily relinquishing their pork barrel spending powers.

Reading Rec’s and Fiscal Facts

• Top Democrats are considering a GOP proposal that would adhere to President Biden’s topline discretionary funding request, spending $1.65 trillion in fiscal year (FY) 2023, or about 9 percent above the prior fiscal year. I have argued that Congress should return discretionary spending to pre-pandemic (FY2019) levels. Because “lawmakers running up emergency deficit spending at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic should not establish a higher spending baseline for years to come. As pandemic needs wind down, so should government spending.”

• House and Senate negotiators propose adding $45 billion to Biden’s defense budget. While still under negotiations, the topline for Congress’ annual National Defense Authorization Act is now $858 billion for FY2023. That’s an $81 billion increase from FY2022.

• Supreme Court to hear student debt forgiveness case in February, as the temporary injunction blocking the program stays in place. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates it would cost $400 billion to carry out Biden’s executive order. The Cato Insitute is among those suing the Department of Education and Cato’s Thomas Berry has laid out a strong case for the illegality of the policy in this piece.

• Congress is considering several increases to healthcare spending as part of an end-of-year funding package. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) estimates that proposed extensions and new policies would cost a combined “$500 billion over a decade…exacerbate inflationary pressures and increase [overall] prices by 20 to 50 basis points.”