Congress is negotiating more than 7,500 “pork-barrel spending” earmarks totaling $16 billion for a year-long omnibus spending bill.
The annual fiscal spending bill, which is meant to keep the federal government funded, will expire at the end of the current fiscal year, in September 2023.
A ban on earmarks was instituted in the House of Representatives since 2011, when Republicans controlled the chamber; but House Democrats recently revived them last year, with provisions to increase transparency.
However, the House Republicans voted to retain earmarks for annual spending bills after they won a slim majority in the midterm elections, outraging fiscal conservatives.
The $16 billion in proposed pork barrel spending projects for next year currently dwarfs the $9.7 billion in earmarks passed through the fiscal spending bill for 2022, reported Bloomberg.
As noted, the general omnibus framework agreement includes over 7,500 earmarks totaling $16 billion in 2023 appropriations bills that could make it into the overall annual spending package, reported Bloomberg Government.
The omnibus spending package comprises 12 separate appropriations bills, which span more than 2,500 pages of text, according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
Bloomberg Government reported a total of 3,123 earmarks from the Senate, which will cost taxpayers $7,780,973,000, and 4,386 earmarks totaling $8,231,999,565 from the House, in next year’s appropriations bills.
Both chambers have proposed a combined 7,509 earmarks totaling $16,012,972,565.
However, the total of earmarks are slightly less than 1 percent of the roughly $1.7 trillion government spending bill that lawmakers expect to pass before the end of the year, Bloomberg reported.
Lawmakers in both parties reached a compromise in 2022, by agreeing to apply a 1 percent cap on new earmarking after it was revived for the fiscal package that year.Congress now has a roadmap for funding the government before the conclusion of the 117th Congress, something the large majority of us want to see,” said Schumer. “We still have a long way to go, but a framework is a big step in the right direction.”
Breitbart noted that there is a chance that if lawmakers fail to strike a deal on an omnibus package and decide to push the compromise into next year when the retiring lawmakers exit Congress, many pork barrel spending provisions could be removed after the new Congress comes into session.
However, several Republican senators have accused own their leadership of caving to Democrats to avoid a government shutdown before the holidays without reviewing the annual spending bill.
