Mitch McConnell’s Earmark Haul Shows Washington’s Swampy Ways
Over much of his time as Senate Republican leader, grassroots citizens have realized that Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., often stands as the antithesis of conservative policy. From bad debt deals to swampy omnibuses, McConnell is generally at the center of the Washington deal-making that ordinary Americans have grown to loathe.
In this vein, most would find the lede paragraph of a recent Roll Call article par for the course:
Unfettered by potential challenges to his position after deciding to step aside, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has returned to the earmarking game with gusto, taking over the top slot in his chamber with almost a half-billion dollars set aside for Kentuckians in the fiscal 2025 spending bills.
Only someone like McConnell could use his impending departure from the leadership ranks to act even more swampy, by obtaining more parochial pork for his state on the taxpayers’ dime.
Billions in Pork-Barrel Spending
The Roll Call article goes on to note that bills approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee thus far have included 3,686 earmarks totaling $7.74 billion. Unfortunately, that number appears likely to increase, as the committee has only approved eight of the 12 spending bills for the upcoming fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1.
Eight of the top 10 Senate earmarkers are Republicans. Because Democrats have reportedly given Republicans 46 percent of all earmark dollars awarded to date, and because the majority of Senate Republicans do not request earmarks, those Republicans that do participate in the process received larger sums than most Democrats.
That dynamic appears to have encouraged more Senate Republicans to sidle up to the trough and start requesting earmarks. Three Republicans — Roger Marshall of Kansas, Ted Budd of North Carolina, and Todd Young of Indiana — requested earmarks for the first time during the fiscal year 2025 process. Combined with McConnell’s decision to return to the earmarking game in full flourish with his time as leader coming to an end, the decision does not portend well for the mantle of fiscal responsibility in Washington.
Spending Flip-Flop
A concise argument against earmarks came in a letter sent in March 2021, as Democrats who had regained control of both houses of Congress prepared for a return to “congressionally directed spending”:
Nothing epitomizes what is wrong with Washington more than pork-barrel spending in the form of congressional earmarks. … Earmarks also help enable Washington’s spending addiction. They have been used as a quasi-legalized form of bribery to entice Members of Congress to approve large spending practices that increase our deficit and explode the national debt. In an era of trillion-dollar deficits and a $27 trillion debt, it is hard to imagine how we will ever be able to restore any form of financial responsibility if big spenders in the halls of Congress are able to use earmarks to keep spending money we don’t have.
Nothing of substance has changed in the letter, other than that our annual budget deficits are routinely approaching $2 trillion, and our national debt has risen from $27 trillion to $35 trillion in less than four years.
But one thing has changed about one of that letter’s signatories: Then-Rep. and now-Sen. Ted Budd went from loudly opposing earmarks in the spring of 2021, as he was preparing his Senate campaign, to supporting them now. Asked about his flip-flop by Roll Call, his office’s response couched his support for earmarks as a way “to make sure the men and women at North Carolina’s military bases have the resources necessary to keep our nation strong and safe.”
That statement dodges the fundamental issue, which is that congressional leaders use earmarks as a “gateway drug” to get their colleagues to vote for spending that they otherwise would not. At a time when our national debt continues to rise ever higher, perhaps Ted Budd should reacquaint himself with that principle — and encourage his swampy Senate colleagues to do so as well.
This post was originally published at The Federalist.