House speaker Paul Ryan stepped in Wednesday to block an effort by some House Republicans to partially resurrect earmark spending, six years after the practice was banned. Here’s the Wall Street Journal with the report:
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) on Wednesday halted a growing push among House Republicans to bring back “earmarks,” lawmakers’ ability to direct federal funding to specific projects. In a closed-door meeting of House Republicans, Mr. Ryan stepped in and stopped lawmakers from passing a change to their internal rules on Wednesday that would have allowed them to make limited funding requests for their districts, according to House GOP aides. Mr. Ryan noted that Republican Donald Trump had just won the White House last week with a pledge to “drain the swamp,” and that the House couldn’t immediately turn around and bring back the practice without public debate, according to someone in the room. He pledged to debate the issue more thoroughly and let them vote on it by the end of March 2017.
As Tatiana Lozano noted when first reporting on the Rooney proposal, this isn’t the first time Republicans have tried to revive earmarks after banning them following the 2010 elections. In 2012, Alaska congressman Don Young offered an amendment that would restore earmark spending, but the measure was defeated.
