A museum in Connecticut was planning to build out its planetarium and observatory. Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee and Texas were set to expand their mentorship programs. A college in Georgia wanted to turn part of its library into a business incubator, and at least two dozen airports across the United States were on track to renovate their terminals and runways.
Those projects and scores of others that had been in line to receive federal funding this year saw that money evaporate this week when Republicans rallied around a stopgap government funding extension to avert a shutdown at midnight tonight. The measure, which passed the House on Tuesday and awaits a vote in the Senate, largely keeps government spending at current levels.
That means it doesn’t include earmarks requested by members of Congress for individual projects in their districts and states. Taken together, the projects totaled about $13 billion, according to congressional aides, a drop in the bucket when it comes to federal spending.
Their omission is yet another way in which Congress has given up its power of the purse — in this case, its members’ ability to direct federal money to projects that help their constituents — at the start of President Trump’s second term.
Lawmakers in both parties lamented the demise of the earmarks, which leaves a host of community improvements and programs in the lurch.
“I’m sorry everybody didn’t get their projects,” Representative Tom Cole, the Oklahoma Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee, told his colleagues in the House chamber on Tuesday.
