Stung by embarrassing projects that slipped into this year’s spending bills, congressional Republicans announced new rules Thursday to crack down on the types of pork-barrel projects that can be funded going forward.
Lawmakers cringed earlier this year when they realized they’d included money for multiple LGBTQ centers, including one that played host to “kink” parties.
While that specific project was backed by Democrats, it was included in a bill written in large part by Republicans, who control the House.
The LGBTQ centers operate as nonprofits, which under the old rules were allowed to receive “earmark” money from Congress through Economic Development Initiative grants.
Newly minted House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, Oklahoma Republican, said that will change as Congress begins work on next year’s bills. Nonprofits will no longer be able to get earmarks from the EDI account, though states and localities are still able to collect money.
“Similar to previous reforms made in this Congress, this change aims to ensure projects are consistent with the community development goals of the federal program,” Mr. Cole wrote in a letter explaining the new rules to colleagues.
Democrats were furious, accusing the GOP of injecting partisan politics into the usually bipartisan tradition of lining up for a piece of the taxpayers’ pie.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the committee, said the rule captures more than just LGBTQ centers. It also blocks money for religious organizations and privately run veterans’ groups and senior centers.
She said nearly half of the EDI account in this year’s spending bills would be ineligible under the new rule.
“The result of this change does not just hurt House Democrats. They are hurting members of their own party by putting all House members at a severe disadvantage,” Ms. DeLauro said in a statement.
Congress is still testing out earmarks after a decade-long ban from 2011 to 2021. That ban, imposed by Republicans, came after bungles both big and small.
At the big end were projects like Alaska’s so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” which got hundreds of millions of federal taxpayer dollars to build a bridge to an island with only several dozen residents and an existing ferry service.
At the small end of the bungles, Congress was so awash in pork-barrel spending that it sent money to the wrong projects entirely.
Then there were the criminal entanglements, with several members of Congress ending up in prison for selling access to earmarks.
Democrats ended the earmark ban in 2021 and brought pork-barrel spending back with a new name — Community Funding Projects — and a new set of rules that Ms. DeLauro said would prevent abuses.
She said Thursday she had created a system of “transparency and accountability” that still allowed lawmakers to directly respond to the needs of their own communities.
Republicans said that shouldn’t mean $1 million in taxpayer money going to organizations like the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia, which was accused of allocating space to groups that hosted kink parties.
The center insisted the parties were much tamer than lawmakers were envisioning, but the whole issue proved toxic and the Democratic sponsors asked that the money be withdrawn from the bill.
Republicans argue that earmarks should be easy, and any project that’s going to cause political trouble for one side of the aisle doesn’t belong.
GOP lawmakers said the stench went beyond LGBTQ spending.
Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, complained that Congress gave $850,000 to an organization known as New Immigrant Community Empowerment, which he said perpetuated the border chaos by working for the legalization of illegal immigrants.
“Even if you agree with that entity, which many Americans don’t, why exactly is it that we are going to take money away from U.S. taxpayers and use that to fund this organization that actively assists in helping illegal aliens get American jobs?” Mr. Lee said on the Senate floor last month as he challenged the earmark.
His attempt to cancel the spending failed.
Though the Senate is run by Democrats, both chambers must agree on earmark projects.
Mr. Cole‘s new rules apply to the spending bills for fiscal year 2025. That doesn’t begin until Oct. 1, but lawmakers will spend the intervening months writing the legislation.
House lawmakers have until May 3 to submit their requests to the Appropriations Committee. They get a two-week grace period before they must then post their requests publicly on their websites.
Requests are supposed to include a declaration that neither the requestors nor their spouses have a financial interest in the project and a description of how the project advances federal spending priorities.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.