Members of Congress have directed federal money to their home areas since the early republic, from river and harbor improvements in the nineteenth century to highways and research centers in the twentieth. The practice reached a peak in the early 2000s, when thousands of earmarks appeared in each year's spending bills, and scandals made earmarks a symbol of congressional excess.
This guide explains what earmarks are, how the rules have changed, how earmarks interact with the President's spending powers, and the arguments for and against them.
Presidents have long sought tools to remove earmarks from spending bills. Congress gave the President a line-item veto in 1996, but the Supreme Court struck it down in Clinton v. City of New York in 1998. Presidents can propose rescissions of specific spending under the Impoundment Control Act, but Congress must approve them. Agencies generally must carry out earmarks that are written into law, though earmarks that appear only in committee reports are not legally binding.
Most federal spending is distributed by agencies through formulas or competitive grants. An earmark instead names a recipient or project in the text of a bill or its accompanying report, bypassing the agency's normal selection. Earmarks can appear in appropriations bills, authorization bills such as highway and water resources acts, and tax bills, where targeted provisions benefit specific taxpayers. The term pork barrel dates to the nineteenth century and is used more broadly and more critically.
A proposed bridge to a sparsely populated Alaska island, dubbed the Bridge to Nowhere in 2005, became a national symbol of wasteful spending, and corruption cases involving lobbyists and members tied to earmarks deepened public anger. Congress adopted disclosure rules in 2007, and in 2011 the House and Senate stopped approving earmarks altogether. During the moratorium, members influenced spending in other ways, including by lobbying agencies directly.
In 2021 the appropriations committees restored earmarks under new names: community project funding in the House and congressionally directed spending in the Senate. The new rules require members to post requests online, certify that they and their families have no financial interest, and limit funding to governments and nonprofits rather than for-profit companies. Total earmarks are capped at about 1 percent of discretionary spending. Some Republicans have since limited which bills may include them, and full-year stopgap funding bills, such as the one for fiscal 2025, have carried none. Earmarks returned in the fiscal 2026 spending laws, which funded 8,271 projects worth nearly 15.5 billion dollars.
Supporters argue that members understand local needs better than federal agencies, that earmarks are transparent under current rules, and that they help leaders assemble majorities for must-pass spending bills, making Congress more functional. Critics argue that earmarks reward seniority and committee power rather than merit, invite lobbying and corruption, and add to deficits even if their share is small. Research is divided on whether earmarks increase total spending or simply redirect money that would be spent anyway.
Federal spending on rivers, harbors, and roads was directed by Congress throughout the nineteenth century, and the Army Corps of Engineers carried out many of those projects. In the twentieth century, highway bills, defense contracts, and university research became common vehicles. The number of earmarks grew sharply from the 1990s, reaching thousands per year by the mid-2000s.
See the broader spending process in how the federal budget works, follow federal money to communities in how federal money reaches your town, or explore the influence industry in lobbying explained.