Congress, Pass the Pork Please
Senators Claire McCaskill and Jeff Flake host a pork lunch in 2018 to discuss making the 2011 earmark moratorium permanent. “Photo courtesy of Sen. Claire McCaskill/Flickr
In 2006, Representative Bob Ney (R-Ohio) was found guilty in one of the largest congressional scandals for accepting bribes from lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for earmark funding directed towards Abramoff’s clients. One form of these bribes was free meals from Abramoff’s restaurant Signatures, which he was later forced to sell after it was discovered that he gave free meals to several other congressional members. For context, Congress determines the annual federal budget through twelve appropriations bills, each allocating funds to different federal agencies. Hard earmarks, which are legally binding line items in these bills, allow members of Congress to direct federal spending towards constituent projects in their home district or state. The Ney-Abramoff earmark scandal and others resulted in the 2011 earmark moratorium.
While the 2021 renewal of hard earmarks after the decade-long moratorium was enforced with stricter rules and supervision, the previous schmoozing at Abramoff’s Signatures continues down the street at the Capital Grille, another restaurant where Republican PACs spent more than $762,000 in the 2024 election cycle. Lobbyists regularly socialize here with Republican members and often host political fundraisers, donating to a member’s reelection campaign out of personal funds that reflect the support of one’s firm. These events may evade the congressional gift rules, created in the wake of the Abramoff scandal, by allowing lobbyists to discuss their clients’ earmark projects with members of Congress while subtly gifting them something in return. Even with reforms, such restaurants remain the preeminent symbols of enduring earmark corruption.
Despite the role that money continues to play in congressional relations with lobbyists, has the improved earmark process corrected the system that allowed such an extreme scandal to occur nearly two decades ago? Although earmarks can be beneficial for both the constituents that receive project funding from the appropriations process and for the members whose reelection optics are improved by assisting their constituencies, the current process is unsustainable for all parties involved and problematized by the third-party role that lobbying and consulting firms play. By further reforming the operation through cutting out the middleman, the value of earmarks could be retained in a more ethical way.
There is disagreement as to when earmarks were first introduced, but some believe they date as far back as 1789 when George Washington signed a bill that appropriated funding for a lighthouse in Virginia. Regardless, they only became more regularized in the 1980s and ‘90s. Informally known as pork-barrel spending, in which legislators use federal funds to “take home the bacon” to their constituents, hard earmarks are now known as “congressionally directed spending” in the Senate and “community project funding” in the House of Representatives.
When Newt Gingrich (R-GA), the “granddaddy of earmarks,” became speaker in 1995, he turned the spending mechanisms into political currency—leveraging these projects to garner votes for an appropriations bill or aid re-election campaigns. Despite efforts to introduce reforms to the process in fiscal years (FY) 2008-10, scandals like the one with Representative Ney and a general misuse of government spending occurred. This is evident from the $29 billion worth of earmarks in FY 2006 alone. The 2011 ban, supported by both President Obama and Speaker Boehner, was a direct response to this abuse and aligned with the Tea Party movement’s goals at the time.
Earmark funding returned to Congress with new rules in 2021 after years of members from both sides of the aisle proposing their restoration and touting their necessity. Since their return, the selection of which members’ projects actually receive funding has become more competitive. As each appropriations bill works its way through its respective subcommittee, then committee, floor, and joint committee–in that order–the number of earmark projects included (if allowed to be included in that bill at all) narrows, and often the amount of money allocated to each project decreases. Now, projects are capped at 1 percent of total discretionary spending, and representatives can only request a maximum of 15 projects for their district (although senators have no such limit). Additionally, required disclosures ensure that members must certify that they have no financial stake or other interest in the requested projects they submit. Importantly, for-profit organizations are ineligible to receive project funding. While these rules have further regulated the congressionally directed spending process, it is still an imperfect operation.
When the 2011 earmark moratorium was lifted in 2021, the Senate Republican Conference maintained its ban on the procedure. Within the rules of their conference, Senate Republicans cannot technically request project funding for their constituents. This rule is nonbinding, however, and many do so anyway. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, won the most earmarks for her home state in FY24, funding 231 projects totaling $576 million. She isn’t alone—despite half the House Republican conference opting out of earmarks in FY22, compared to only five House Democrats, Republican members requested over $20 million more than Democrats at the individual level. Republican members who request earmarks acknowledge that it would be a disadvantage if they didn’t do so, causing many to benefit from the spending measures despite espousing anti-earmark sentiments.
Another significant player in the earmark game is lobbyists. Despite the volatility of the process, many lobbying firms have made securing earmarks for their clients a central service since their 2021 return. There is a potential quid pro quo element to the earmark process, given the tertiary relationship of lobbying firms to both constituents requesting earmark projects and members who attempt to get these projects funded. Part of what can make this relationship transactional is inconspicuous fundraising for members of Congress by lobbying firms themselves, such as what occurs at D.C. restaurants. Although these negotiations go rather unspoken publicly, a firm will often fundraise for a member if they have one or several clients in the member’s district or state who may benefit from the submission of an earmark project. This action is completely legal within the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA), but one can clearly see how a lobbying firm throwing a fundraiser for a member of Congress could influence that member to deal kindly with the firm’s clients.
Recent research by Huq, Hassan, and Houston proves the correlation between lobbying firms’ political contributions to members of Congress and their subsequent receipt of earmarks. These authors found that firm-affiliated political action committee (PAC) contributions to members of Congress “increase the probability of the legislator writing an earmark benefiting the firm, with an average return of 1090%.” This is a significant return on investment for both the firms and their clients, which explains why firms have embraced the earmark process. There is an incentive, then, for firms to make contributions to members if doing so means that their clients will pay them more, thus creating a quid pro quo relationship between members and lobbying firms. This relationship between lobbyists and members of Congress reduces the ability for all parties to compete equally in the process—certain constituent organizations get a leg up with members because of their lobbying influence.
The Republican Party’s opposition to earmarks could be disastrous for the lobbying firms whose revenue now significantly depends on securing earmarks for clients. With complete Republican control of Congress beginning in January 2025, it is unclear what could happen to these funding measures, and thus to the services that such firms provide. The business of securing earmarks for clients has already been highly volatile for lobbying firms. In April, House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole barred nonprofits from receiving project funding under the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Economic Development Initiative (EDI) grant program. The restriction left firms scrambling since they had already lobbied members to include nonprofit clients’ projects in the EDI. This, of course, resulted in client pushback and a shift in lobbying priorities on behalf of these clients. Even if earmarks remain part of the appropriations process, frequent rule modifications undermine their efficacy, as well as the ability of firms to secure earmark funding for their clients.
The question that remains from the uncertain circumstances of the earmark process is whether funding these projects is justified. Funding towards specific projects can and has supported vital community interests, creating jobs and targeting specific problems. Earmarks often fund infrastructure improvements, crucial new equipment for hospitals, and improvements for local emergency services, among other necessary advancements. Oftentimes, earmark funding is directed toward projects that may find difficulty obtaining funding elsewhere. And now that earmark funding is restricted against for-profit organizations, it seems as though this benefit would be exponentially multiplied as money is supposedly flowing to in-need nonprofit organizations.
In reality, however, excessive government funding continues to waste taxpayer dollars under earmarks, meaning that this supposed benefit is lessened as much funding is directed to superfluous projects without much oversight. For instance, earmarks often benefit the most powerful legislators, frequently those on the Appropriations Committee like Senator Collins, who have significant power over the bills—the projects she wins funding for are not necessarily the most essential. Furthermore, the 2024 Congressional Pig Book Summary, a report aimed at combating government funding waste by analyzing the year’s funded earmark projects, highlights the excesses of FY24’s budgetary spending. The report gave its “You Cannot Be Serious Award” to both of New York’s senators for directing $1.75 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an institution worth $5 billion in 2023. These examples illustrate how taxpayer funds often go towards projects not in dire need of government funding, underscoring the necessity of further reform.
Though line-item spending can be beneficial for funding constituent projects, the use of lobbying firms to accomplish this goal corrupts the earmark process, tipping the funding scales towards organizations and congressional members with more resources and away from those that are perhaps more in need. The involvement of lobbyists and their money turns the earmark process into a market, as money (fundraising) is exchanged for favors (earmark projects for clients). This market is unsustainable, however, for the firms themselves. Earmarks are ever-evolving, and with the partisan views on their existence and implementation, it is nonsensical that firms rely heavily on them within their portfolio of client services.
Is there a way to reform congressionally directed spending, or community project funding, even further? The third-party role of lobbying is a central corrupting element of the current process. Improving this could mean cutting out the middleman entirely. By making the earmark process more direct, from constituent to member, the benefits of the procedure could be kept intact. Constituents and members both profit, without wasting excess cash on the lobbyist between them. This effort would take significant reform and yes, lobbying, in its own right, but the results of such an attempt could be tremendous. It is possible to prevent “bringing home the bacon” from being a corruptive, complicated, capitalist process.
Delaney Dermody (BC ’25) is a staff writer from Seattle, WA. She studies political science and religion, and is interested in immigration policy, congressional reform, and democratic initiatives and engagement. She can be reached at dad2223@barnard.edu.