Earmarks

An earmark directs federal funds to a particular project, organization, or location, rather than leaving the choice to an agency through a competitive or formula process. Members of Congress have long secured money for roads, harbors, research centers, and other projects in their districts, and earmarks grew rapidly in the 1990s and early 2000s, peaking at thousands of items a year. The 2005 plan to fund a bridge to a sparsely populated Alaska island, nicknamed the Bridge to Nowhere, became a national symbol of wasteful earmarks.

Reforms in 2007 required members to disclose their earmarks and certify that they had no financial interest in them, and in 2011 the House and Senate adopted moratoriums that ended earmarks for a decade. In 2021 Congress restored them under new names, Community Project Funding in the House and Congressionally Directed Spending in the Senate, with stricter rules: requests must be posted online, for-profit companies are ineligible, members must certify no family financial interest, and total earmarks are capped at about 1 percent of discretionary spending.

Earmarks were again dropped from fiscal 2025 appropriations when Congress funded the government through a full-year continuing resolution in March 2025. They returned for fiscal 2026, when the final spending laws carried nearly 15.5 billion dollars for 8,271 projects, about 1 percent of discretionary spending. Supporters say earmarks let members who know their communities direct modest sums to worthy local projects, return spending decisions from agencies to Congress, and help build the coalitions needed to pass spending bills. Critics say they encourage wasteful, parochial spending, reward seniority and political connections, and have been linked to corruption scandals.