A fast-approaching government funding deadline means a new federal budget, and lawmakers can secure funding for community projects back home — or so they hope.

But so-called “earmarks,” formally known as congressionally directed spending, are once again on the chopping block unless Congress can find the bipartisan muster to pass a new fiscal 2026 budget that begins Oct. 1.

Recommended Stories

• Trump says Senate 'must' stay in session to confirm all nominees: 'No recess'
• Senate Republicans eye bipartisan deal to speed up Trump nominee votes
• Senate Democrats make late push to drive GOP’s Epstein files headache

The controversial earmarks, submitted by lawmakers and a mechanism Republicans love-hate, involve thousands of individual projects that funnel billions of dollars to roads, bridges, symphony orchestras, and shellfish nurseries.

“You can live without them,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who is running for Alabama governor rather than a second Senate term. “But it makes it a lot easier for the state budgets.”

The United States is currently funded at outdated spending levels from fiscal 2024. After lawmakers repeatedly failed to reach consensus, they were forced to extend the old budget, which will end Sept. 30. A natural casualty of that year-long extension was earmarks.

More than 8,000 earmarks totaling almost $15 billion were in the fiscal 2024 budget. Earmarks are generally not included in stopgap measures to avoid double-funding projects, meaning no earmarks were included earlier this year when lawmakers extended those budget levels with their latest stopgap funding law.

Although earmarks amount to billions of dollars, they are but a fraction of the Nation’s spending, which is nearly $7 trillion annually. They are capped at 1% of total discretionary spending. Still, they’re important markers for lawmakers to show constituents they’re bringing home a piece of the pie.

But to fiscal hawks such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who assails earmarks as the “gateway drug” to bloated pork barrel spending, punting with stopgap measures can be a win-win. They keep current funding levels steady and can ultimately kick earmarks to the curb rather than a new budget with elevated spending and earmarks. Johnson is making a long-shot push to enact a new stipulation that would rescind a lawmaker’s earmark funding if they campaign on it or publicly boast of it, including to the press.  

“I don’t want to turn this into the quasi-public financing campaigns,” Johnson said.

More than 5,400 earmarks, worth more than $23 billion, have been requested by House members this year for the Oct. 1 budget. Senators made nearly 14,000 requests, but the total amount was unclear.

Even with lawmakers’ prolific use of them, earmarks are but a sliver of the fallout from the potential inability to reach a bipartisan budget deal. And reaching across the aisle several months into President Donald Trump’s second term is anything but prolific on Capitol Hill.

GOP BATTLE BREWS OVER ‘GATEWAY DRUG’ OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING: EARMARKS

This week alone, Republicans and Democrats have sparred over a logjam on presidential nominees against the backdrop of Democratic infighting over whether to more forcefully resist Trump, including a jarring episode in which Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) accused liberal colleagues of being “complicit.”

“I think whether we get earmarks or not is the least of our problems,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), an Appropriations Committee member.