House Republicans drop decadelong opposition to earmarks

The new rules require Republican members to request funds for their district as long as the request is public and they provide “a written justification for why the project is an appropriate use of taxpayer funds” and neither the member nor the member’s immediate family has an immediate financial interest in the request, plus other rules and guidance that Republicans may add in the future.

The change follows Democrats reinstituting a revamped version of earmarks. Last month, House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro announced that her committee will accept “community project funding” requests from members, but the new rule includes changes to the much-criticized earmark rules of decades past. It includes new transparency measures and bans funds from going to for-profit organizations, instead only allowing state and local government or nonprofit group recipients.

EARMARKS ARE BACK. REPUBLICANS HAVE A DILEMMA

Congress placed a ban on earmarks, the practice of allowing members of Congress to direct spending for certain programs or projects in their districts while circumventing the normal appropriations process, in 2011. They are often negatively described as “pork barrel” spending.

Democrats’ change created a dilemma for Republicans. House Republican Conference rules held that “no Member shall request a congressional earmark, limited tax benefit, or limited tariff benefit, as such terms have been described in the Rules of the House.”

But many in the conference, including some heavy hitters, had long thought that earmarks should be brought back, arguing that Republicans should take part in the practice if Democrats are and that Congress should not leave all district project funding decisions to the administration.

Last week, Houses Republicans held a listening session on changing the rule, and the caucus adopted the change in a secret ballot.

Conference leadership stayed out of the earmarks debate, but following adoption of the measure on Wednesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy defended the change.

“There’s a real concern about the administration directing where money goes. This doesn’t add one more dollar. I think members here know what’s most important about what’s going on in their district, not Biden,” McCarthy told the press pool. “I think members want to have a say in their own district.”

Conservatives among House Republicans are furious at the change after so much bipartisan opposition to the practice. Former President Barack Obama campaigned against earmarks in 2008, pointing to money aimed at expensive projects such as the “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska that was meant to connect one town to an airport but was never completed. Other critics say that the process fosters corruption. In 2006, California Rep. Randy Cunningham was sentenced to eight years in prison for taking bribes in order to deliver spending via earmarks.

“That isn’t the leadership that we need. The Republican Party should be ashamed of itself for embracing earmarks when the American people are staring $30 trillion in debt,” Texas Rep. Chip Roy said in a House Freedom Caucus press conference on Wednesday.

Roy led a group of 18 Republicans who pledged in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday that they “will not request earmarks, or the preferred euphemism of the day, ‘Community Project Funding.'”

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That is significantly fewer members than the number who voted against the change. The resolution reportedly passed 102 to 84.

One conservative House Republican staff member expressed frustration at the lack of earmark opposition in the conference: “That’s just embarrassing.”