Earmarks Are Fixing Congress
Springtime in Washington, D.C. kicks off annual budget negotiations in Congress, with lawmakers coming off of passing about 90% of the budget through regular order – their most successful appropriations cycle in 30 years.
That raises an obvious question: With Congressional approval still hovering around 15% amid heavy polarization and an otherwise unproductive Congress, how did they manage to pull this off?
The answer is one Washington thought it had left behind: earmarks.
Once synonymous with corruption and excess, earmarks have reemerged in a far more transparent and accountable form. And this time they’re strengthening congressional oversight, reconnecting lawmakers to local priorities, and making the federal budget process work again.
That wasn’t always the case. From the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” – a $220 million project to connect mainland Alaska to an island of just 50 residents – to a $40 million research center bearing a sitting Senator’s name, earmarks became a symbol of Washington at its worst. Add in high-profile corruption cases that sent members of Congress to prison, and it’s no surprise lawmakers imposed a decade-long moratorium on the practice.
That ban ended in 2021. What replaced it is a fundamentally different system.
Members now face real constraints on what they can request – and intense scrutiny over what they choose to submit. Offices routinely conduct multiple rounds of vetting, and applicants are expected to present well-developed, community-focused proposals. With thousands of strong submissions competing for limited slots, there is little room for projects without an obvious community benefit.
And the numbers bear this out. Congress directed approximately $16 billion in earmark funding across more than 8,000 projects in the 2026 budget. At the same time, lawmakers passed 11 of 12 appropriations bills through regular order – the most since the 1990s.
That is not a coincidence.
During the 10-year earmark moratorium, congress became increasingly reliant on continuing resolutions to fund the government – often stringing together multiple short-term extensions or resorting to massive year-end omnibus packages. Without earmarks, rank-and-file members had less direct incentive to support individual appropriations bills, making it harder for leadership to assemble the coalitions needed to pass them. And, with each continuing resolution, spending programs are simply held at the previous year’s level, regardless of how badly they may need adjusted.
Earmarks change that dynamic.
They give members a tangible stake in the outcome of the appropriations process. Failing to pass a budget no longer just means abstract dysfunction in Washington – it means real projects in their districts don’t get funded. That shift in incentives has helped drive the kind of bipartisan engagement necessary to move spending bills across the finish line.
Notably, the only bill left unfinished this cycle – the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill – contains relatively few earmarks. That contrast underscores how important these projects have become in building the support needed to pass funding legislation.
Importantly, today’s earmarks are also far smaller in scope than their predecessors. The practice peaked at roughly $30 billion in 2006. Today, earmarks are capped at 1% of discretionary spending, ensuring they remain a modest but meaningful part of the overall budget.
Critics argue that earmarks invite abuse, and history shows that risk is real. But the current system’s transparency requirements and strict limitations are designed specifically to prevent a return to those past excesses. Every request is public, and every project is subject to scrutiny from both the press and the voters.
At the same time, large portions of federal spending still flow through opaque grant-making processes controlled by federal agencies, where unelected bureaucrats exercise significant discretion over funding decisions. Earmarks rebalance that dynamic by returning a share of those decisions to elected officials who are directly accountable to voters.
Earmarks are not a cure-all. Congress remains deeply polarized, and the budget process is still far from perfect. But the results of this year’s appropriations cycle are clear: when members have a direct stake in the outcome, Congress is more capable of doing its most basic job - funding the government.
After years of dysfunction, that is real progress. Lawmakers should build on it – not retreat from it.
That said, while the new earmark process has been a boon to good governance, continued vigilance is imperative. The dark history of earmarks hasn’t been forgotten, and we are only one project benefiting a nonprofit tied to a requesting member’s family away from another decade-long moratorium – or worse.
