If anything should finally force a public up-or-down vote on earmarks, it’s the haul won by The Squad during the current 118th Congress.
Since the start of 2023, this small clique of eight far-Left socialists have managed to tack $224 million worth of pet projects onto the spending bills meant to fund core government operations.
One doesn’t need three guesses to start landing on some of the themes addressed repeatedly by their pork-barrel spending. The list includes advancing “environmental justice,” spreading so-called “equity,” aiding illegal immigrants and salvaging bits of the unpopular “Green New Deal” championed by Squad-leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-N.Y.).
These are the priorities of a new kind of progressivism – neo-Marxism, really – that has grabbed hold of the Democratic Party’s bullhorn. But every dime of it has been aided and abetted by Republicans.
Earmarks had been banned for a decade before the House GOP held a secret vote to join Democrats and reinstate the practice three years ago.
Since then, billions have flowed to vanity projects, frivolous or downright silly projects, employers of spouses, and items that should be funded at the state or local levels where officials better understand the community’s needs.
The late Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.) called earmarks the “currency of corruption” for a reason – the projects are too often self-interested, self-aggrandizing, wasteful, or all three.
It’s bipartisan corruption that’s spending America straight into bankruptcy.
Last year’s spending bill was proof: our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com, an organization I founded and lead, found $16 billion worth of earmarks in the $1.7 trillion fiscal 2023 year-end omnibus bill, and seven of the top 10 biggest earmark culprits were Republicans.
This year, it was $15.7 billion across 8,051 earmarks in two “minibus” measures in March 2024.