House Republicans will suck up $4.5 billion for pet projects in their districts, also known as earmarks, in the upcoming spending bills that most of them will probably vote against. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi called them the “vote no and take the dough” caucus back in 2021, and they’re doing their best to prove her right.
The first of the funding bills for fiscal year 2024 is slated to be on the House floor Wednesday, coming under a suspension of the rules, which means it bypasses the House Rules Committee and won’t be open for amendments. That’s because House GOP leadership can’t get through the Rules Committee to do it under regular order. That’s been the case on all of the funding bills since former Speaker Kevin McCarthy handed the committee over to the extremists.
That means that the package will likely pass Wednesday in the House with mostly Democratic votes, barring a disaster or major revolt from the right that gives Johnson cold feet. House Republicans have sucked up much of that earmarked money, which they now call “community funding projects,” and they will go home to their constituents and brag in their reelection ads about the money they’re bringing home. What they won’t say is that they relied on Democrats to get it done.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans Mike Lee and Rick Scott are railing about earmarks on social media, presumably blasting Senate Democrats for their included projects. Scott shout-tweeted about the “605 PAGES OF EARMARKS” in the package and complained that the Democrats are “cashing in your tax dollars and digging us deeper in debt for woke nonsense.” Lee piped up in response, tweeting, “Earmarks corrupt government. Earmarks turn Republicans Democrat. No Republican should support them. No Republican should vote for this bill.”
They should have read those earmarks a little more carefully, though. As the Washington Post’s Paul Kane points out, House Republicans’s earmarks are “more than half a billion more dollars than their next closest competitor, the Democratic caucus in the Senate.”
But plenty, if not most, House Republicans will certainly take Lee’s advice and vote against it, knowing that Democrats will make sure the government doesn’t shut down—and approve Republicans’ earmarks along the way. And just like Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar, they’ll run home with their prop checks and claim credit. Unlike Salazar, most of them probably won’t be called on it by local media.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
Meanwhile, Boebert submitted over $20 million in earmark requests herself.
In #CO03, Rep. Lauren Boebert submitted 10 earmark requests. It includes $1.4M for Glenwood Spring's South Bridge project & $5M for Wolf Creek Reservoir project. https://t.co/DFE18I6BZl
— Caitlyn Kim (@caitlynkim) April 18, 2023
