We examined the House of Representative’s reinstitution of member-directed spending, more commonly known as “earmarks,” in a recent post. Earlier this month, the Senate Appropriations Committee released its own list of member requests. The Senate, like the House, has done an excellent job of increasing the transparency of the process, making detailed information on requests available to the public in a timely manner.

Overall, 64 senators made 8,055
requests totaling $26.8 billion. Far fewer Republicans participated than
Democrats. Only 16 GOP senators submitted requests, including a few senior
members like Appropriations Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL), Budget
Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD). Only
two Democrats, Jon Tester (D-MT) and Margaret Hassan (D-NH) declined to
participate. This is in marked contrast to the House, where 122 of 212 (57.5
percent) GOP members requested earmarks.

Consequently, Republicans only accounted for 15 percent of the overall funding requested (Figure 1). The comparable figure for the House is 35 percent.

This outcome is perhaps unsurprising, given the rockier road reinstituting earmarking faced within the Senate Republican Conference. Democrats and Republicans in both chambers instituted rules barring members from requesting earmarks starting in 2011, largely in reaction to incidents of corruption and budget deficits. Senate Republicans took the hardest line against earmarking, choosing to end the earmark moratorium in 2019 by banning the practice “permanently” under their conference rules. This put them in an awkward position when it came time to decide whether to join with the House and their Democratic colleagues in reinstating directed spending.

Senate Appropriations chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) tried to entice his Republican colleagues into participating by offering a 50-50 funding split between the parties. After a week of debate, the Republican Conference determined to let the ban on earmarking stand, but counseled their members that this conference rule was non-binding.

Plainly, the GOP conference
rule curbed Republican interest. It also may set the stage for additional
Republican pushback against earmarks. The Senate GOP could hard bargain against
the inclusion of member-directed spending in future negotiations of
appropriations should they retake the majority. And if Republicans reclaim the
Senate or the House in the 2022 elections, the return of earmarks might be
short-lived.

Senators, 58 of whom never experienced a budget process with earmarking, have shifted their priorities quite a bit since the moratorium. Before 2011, defense and military construction accounted for 60 percent of earmark spending. Interestingly, Senate appropriators did not open any defense-related federal accounts for directed spending requests. A Senate GOP aide stated that “defense spending largely goes to for-profit corporations through competitively-bid processes,” and it was therefore considered inappropriate for directed spending requests. The House did allow for some defense requests, but only for research and development accounts. Much like the House, and reflecting how the agenda in Washington has shifted toward transportation and infrastructure, transportation spending was the most common request, comprising 35 percent of total funding (Figure 2). The House had also made transportation and infrastructure their priority, with 60 percent of funding requested in this category.

The rules governing Senate-directed spending differed from the House in key respects. In the House, the Appropriations Committee limited members to 10 individual requests, capped all project funding to 1 percent of discretionary spending, and required evidence of community support. Appropriations subcommittee chairs issued guidance on which federal accounts would be accepting requests. The House Transportation Committee also took directed funding requests, but did not cap the amount or number of requests.

The Senate’s transportation committee, unlike the House’s, did not solicit members for earmark requests. This will complicate the conference committee’s work in deciding how to reconcile these with House and Senate Appropriations transportation subcommittee requests. Further complicating matters, the Senate Appropriations committee made more federal accounts available for directed spending requests (41 vs. 60), did not require evidence of community support for funding, and had no cap on the number of requests senators could make. Combined with the partisan imbalance in Senate requests, these differences produced funding priorities different from those in the House.

What earmarks actually get funded remains very unclear. The Senate has neither passed nor enacted any of the 12 appropriations bills. Nor has it adopted a budget resolution for the coming fiscal year. With the end of the fiscal year approaching (September 30), Congress could be forced to enact a continuing resolution, which might not include any earmarks. Or it may piece together an omnibus spending bill that has earmarks galore. Or no appropriations may be enacted and there will be a government shutdown, which also would preclude the funding of any earmarks requested.

We will report the ultimate status of FY2022 earmarking in a future post.

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