Could pork make a comeback? Trump and Congress consider reviving earmarks

WASHINGTON — A battle is brewing in Congress over whether to put pork back on the legislative menu.

This isn’t about bacon, but so-called “earmarks,” the specially-tagged funding provisions tucked into spending bills by members of Congress to channel federal money to favored home-state projects.

Critics say the funding provisions foster profligate spending and corruption — with millions of dollars doled out to lawmakers with the most political muscle, rather than to the projects with the most merit. House Republicans banned the provisions in 2011 after an earmark-related corruption scandal sent a former lawmaker and lobbyist to prison.

But supporters want to overturn the ban; by killing earmarks, they say, Congress has relinquished its spending power to federal bureaucrats who decide which projects get federal money. And the pro-earmark camp got a surprise boost from President Trump on Tuesday.

“I hear so much about earmarks — the old earmark system — how there was a great friendliness when you had earmarks,” Trump said at a bipartisan White House meeting on immigration. “Maybe all of you should start thinking about going back to a form of earmarks … because this system really lends itself to not getting along.”

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

Read more:

In extraordinary public negotiation with Congress, Trump promises to sign DACA bill

Why Congress can't agree on how to fund the government

There’s no question that earmarks helped grease the legislative wheels in Congress, with spending projects offered by House and Senate leaders assuring “yes” votes on key bills. They were bargaining chips beloved by Republicans and Democrats alike.

So maybe it's no surprise that more than seven years into the ban, many lawmakers are now lamenting the loss of earmarks, and citing their constitutional spending power, as well as a broken appropriations process, to urge their return.

“I think we’ve just given up so much power to the executive branch, number one," Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the vice chair of the Rules Committee and a member of the Budget and Appropriations Committees told reporters Tuesday morning. "Number two, obviously you’ve lost a legislative tool that’s useful, and number three you’ve lost the ability to literally take care of problems in your own district, you know, or the districts of other members that you need to help … so the case for them is overwhelming.”

The House Rules Committee will host two hearings next week to discuss the possibility of bringing back earmarks. But Republicans insist that whatever comes out of the process won’t be the same earmark system of days past.

Caroline Boothe, a spokeswoman for Rules Committee Chair Pete Sessions, R-Texas, told USA TODAY that they aren't using the word “earmarks.” Instead, the hearings are focused on “congressionally directed spending.”

Sessions suggested he could be open to a reformed earmark process that looks at the value of each project, among other factors. He said the process would have to be transparent, based on merit, and involve input from states.

All the pro-earmark chatter sparked fierce and immediate blowback from House conservatives and their allied outside groups.

“When you’re talking about draining the swamp it is very difficult in the same mouthful to suggest that we are going to reinstitute earmarks,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, who chairs the hardline House Freedom Caucus and is close with the president.

“Generally it leads to more spending and less accountability, so I can’t imagine that it would be any different now,” Meadows said.

Heritage Action, a conservative advocacy group, said earmarks are a form of “pork-barrel spending to buy votes and undermine conservative opposition to big-government legislation.”

 “It is nearly unthinkable that after President Trump ran a historically successful election to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington, D.C., Congress would consider reinstating one of the most egregious examples of cronyism on Capitol Hill,” Heritage Action’s chief executive officer, Michael A. Needham, said in a statement blasted out to reporters on Tuesday.

Earmarks started to fall out of favor as federal spending ballooned during President George W. Bush’s time in the White House. Critics ridiculed projects like the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” a $320 million earmark for a bridge in Alaska from the tiny town of Ketchikan to the equally tiny Gravina Island.

But the ban only came after a set of earmark-related corruption scandals, including one that sent ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to prison after he admitted putting earmarks into spending bills to repay defense contractors who showered him with cash and expensive gifts, including a Rolls-Royce and a yacht.

There was also ex-super lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who also went to prison in part for lavishing gifts on lawmakers in exchange for earmarks and other favors. Abramoff once reportedly called the appropriations committee an “earmark favor factory.”