The return of earmarks to the annual appropriations bills has sparked a battle among Republicans on Capitol Hill, pitting fiscal hawks against members of the Appropriations Committees and their allies.
It’s a serious battle and one that could scuttle the chances of passing appropriations bills ahead of the Sept. 30 government funding deadline.
Republican responsibility for the huge federal deficit has become a hot political issue after President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is projected to add $3.4 trillion to the debt over the next decade, into law.
Conservatives are deeply disappointed that Trump’s bill did not make deeper cuts to federal spending, and they want to make a statement with significant reductions in the annual appropriations bills for fiscal 2026.
Adding to the frustrations of fiscal hawks, those bills are already loaded with earmarks directing the Trump administration how to spend funds.
Conservatives view the return of earmarks as a return to the days of pork-barrel spending and a bad look for Republicans when the party is taking fire from Democrats for exploding future deficits.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a leading conservative, argued that earmarks are still prohibited by Senate Republican conference rules, even though some members of the conference choose not to follow them.
“It’s still prohibited by conference policy, and I think we need to stick to that,” Lee told The Hill.
Lee said the proliferation of earmarks in the spending bills are “incompatible with our approach as Republicans, and it’s also incompatible with having $37 trillion in debt.”
Some conservatives are pushing for Congress to pass a yearlong stop-gap spending measure that would freeze federal funding levels as a strategy to keep spending in check and the next wave of earmarks in limbo.
Senate Republicans voted for a “permanent ban” on earmarks in May 2019, when the proposal passed by a 28-12 vote after a heated debate behind closed doors.
But earmarks have since made a big comeback.
The House, then controlled by Democrats, voted in March 2021 to reverse an internal ban on earmarks.
Senate Republicans, who were in the minority at the time, decided in April 2021 to stick with their conference pro forma ban on earmarks but left open a big loophole by allowing individual GOP senators to request money for home-state projects.
That decision still rankles some Republicans years later. They believe they’re in a position to change the rising tide of earmarks now that their party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) called the earmarks buried in the spending bills “offensive.”
“It is offensive that I don’t know what they are yet,” he said of earmarks. “I’m asking my staff and we don’t have the specifics on this.
“That’s the problem. This stuff is all secret until you’re ready to vote on it,” he added.
Johnson has a proposal that would automatically rescind earmarks if lawmakers “brag” about the millions of dollars in federal funding they’re steering to projects back home in any kind of political context.
Under his proposal, “the only time members can talk about the earmarks, their congressionally directed spending, is as part of official Senate business — a hearing, a subcommittee hearing and on the floor,” he said.
“They can’t then go out and brag about it in the media … if they do that, if they issue a press release, if they put it in a campaign ad, that spending gets automatically rescinded,” Johnson explained.
Twenty-one Republican senators voted for Johnson’s amendment when he offered it to the appropriations bill funding military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs, a bill that was expanded to fund the Department of Agriculture and the legislative branch.
Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Lee were among the Republicans who voted for Johnson’s proposal.
The conservatives’ backlash against earmarks in the package came after Punchbowl News reported that Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) loaded more than $810 million in earmarks and directed spending for Maine in the fiscal 2026 spending bills crafted by her committee.
Collins, who faces a tough reelection battle next year, argues she has a better sense of her state’s funding needs than unelected bureaucrats in Washington who otherwise would get to decide how to dole out federal funds without congressional guidance.
Other Republicans are working hard behind the scenes to steer more money to their home states.
More Republican senators have requested congressionally directed spending, aka earmarks, for the fiscal 2026 spending bills compared to last year.
And earmarks have exploded in the Republican-controlled House.
One Republican source familiar with the details of the spending bills noted House Republicans are also requesting more earmarks than they did last year and pointed out that Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.), an outspoken House conservative, has requested more than $55 million for his district.
An analysis by Roll Call found House Republicans have packed the appropriations bills for next year with nearly $8 billion in earmarks.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) — the chair of the Senate Steering Committee who voted for Johnson’s proposal to rescind earmarks if senators use them to score political points — said conservatives will make additional efforts to pull earmarks out of the spending bills and find other ways to reduce federal spending.
“Hopefully we have time to review the bills [and] not get rushed into votes on these things,” he said. “We’ve got to understand we have a $2 trillion [annual] deficit, so we’ve got to get spending under control. That’s what I’m going to try to do, and there are a lot of people in the same camp that I am.”
Scott indicated he sees the battle against earmarks as part of a broader effort to curb federal spending after conservatives failed to include bigger spending reforms in Trump’s megabill.
“People are doing everything they can to try to get spending under control,” he said.
Lee, Johnson and Scott pushed an amendment to Trump’s bill in June to reduce Medicaid spending by another $313 billion by preventing new enrollees in Medicaid expansion states from receiving the 9-to-1 enhanced Federal Medical Assistance Percentage if they are not disabled or don’t have dependent children.
They delayed a key procedural vote to advance the bill in hopes of gaining Republican support for the proposal, but despite assurances of help from Senate GOP leaders and Vice President Vance, the amendment didn’t receive a vote.
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