Every year Congress passes a stack of appropriations bills that determine how the federal government spends roughly $1.7 trillion in discretionary money. Buried inside those bills are thousands of “earmarks” — line-items that direct money to a specific project, place, or recipient picked by an individual member of Congress. After a decade-long ban, earmarks were reintroduced in 2021 under the new label “community project funding.” The total in member-directed spending now runs in the tens of billions of dollars per year, layered on top of the federal deficit and the interest payments that already exceed the entire defense budget.
For families in Florida’s 14th Congressional District — Brandon, Riverview, Valrico, Plant City, Sun City Center, and Apollo Beach — that arithmetic matters. Every dollar funneled to a hand-picked earmark is a dollar borrowed against future taxes, a dollar that compounds the $36 trillion national debt, and a dollar Hillsborough County taxpayers had no real chance to weigh in on.
This post explains what a congressional earmark actually is, how the appropriations process produces them, what they cost FL-14 households, and the reform agenda that would put a stop to it.
What Is a Congressional Earmark?
A congressional earmark is a line-item in a federal spending bill that directs money to a specific project chosen by an individual member of Congress, rather than through the normal competitive federal grant process. The recipient might be a city, a university, a nonprofit, a state agency, or, in the worst cases, a private contractor with a direct relationship to the member.
The mechanism matters. Federal spending normally moves through one of two paths. Mandatory programs — Social Security, Medicare, certain veterans’ benefits — pay automatically based on eligibility rules in law. Discretionary programs — most of the rest of the federal government — are funded through the annual appropriations process, where executive-branch agencies request money and Congress decides how to allocate it. Within that allocation, federal grant programs typically use competitive merit reviews: applicants submit proposals, expert panels score them, and the highest-ranked projects get funded.
Earmarks bypass that entire competitive layer. A member of Congress writes the recipient and dollar amount directly into the appropriations bill. The merit review never happens. The other applicants never get a chance.
When earmarks were banned in 2011, the practice had reached such an embarrassing scale — including the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” — that both parties agreed to a moratorium. That moratorium ended in 2021, when leaders in both chambers brought the practice back under the relabeled name “community project funding.” The cosmetic rebrand did not change the underlying mechanism. The same line-items, the same selection-by-member, the same end-run around competitive grant review.
How Pork Spending Hits the Federal Budget
The dollars in question are not trivial. In recent appropriations cycles, House and Senate members combined to direct more than $15 billion per year in member-requested funding through community project funding line-items. That total is layered on top of an annual federal deficit that routinely exceeds $1.5 trillion.
The structural problem is that earmarks are wrapped inside “must-pass” omnibus and continuing-resolution bills. By the time the bill reaches the floor, voting against it would shut down the federal government — funding lapses for the military, federal courts, the Border Patrol, air traffic control. So members vote yes on the package even when they object to the individual earmarks inside it.
That dynamic is exactly what makes the earmark system so attractive to leadership. Earmarks are bargaining chips. They are used to buy votes on broader spending bills that members would otherwise oppose. A reluctant senator becomes a yes when their state gets $40 million for a hand-picked project. The appropriations process becomes a vote-buying machine, with the federal taxpayer footing the bill.
For broader context on how this kind of spending compounds the national debt, see our analysis of DOGE and government waste in FL-14 and the case for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
How FL-14 Taxpayers See the Cost
Earmark spending shows up in three places for Hillsborough County families.
The federal tax bill. Every dollar of member-directed spending that does not pay for itself with new revenue is borrowed against future taxes. Working families in Brandon, Valrico, and Riverview pay for those earmarks twice — once when the bill is passed, and again when interest on the borrowed money compounds for decades.
Inflation. Federal deficit spending that exceeds the economy’s capacity to absorb it produces inflation. The roughly 25 percent grocery price increase Hillsborough County families have lived through is the cumulative effect of years of unfunded federal spending — earmarks included. Our inflation and cost-of-living analysis for FL-14 walks through that arithmetic in detail.
Opportunity cost. Federal money funneled into a hand-picked earmark in another district is money that did not go through competitive grant review for projects that might have benefited Florida’s 14th Congressional District. When a senator in another state gets $40 million for a museum, that is $40 million that was not available for hurricane-grid resilience after Helene and Milton, federal infrastructure dollars for I-75 and the Selmon Expressway, or the Tampa-area VA. See the FL-14 picture in our hurricane preparedness and FEMA reform and infrastructure and traffic breakdowns.
Why Congress Brought Earmarks Back
The argument from leadership in 2021 was that earmarks help “regular order” — the idea that if members get their pet projects, they will vote for broader bills, and Congress will pass appropriations on schedule rather than through chaotic last-minute deals. The empirical record since 2021 does not support that argument. The federal government has continued to lurch from continuing resolution to omnibus to shutdown threat. Earmarks have come back, but the regular-order discipline they were supposed to restore has not.
What earmarks do reliably produce is a new layer of insider influence over federal spending. Members with seniority and committee assignments get more earmarks than members who do not. Appropriations chairs become brokers. Lobbying firms that specialize in steering earmarks toward client cities, universities, and contractors have grown. The structural incentive — to spend more, on more hand-picked projects, in members’ home districts — points in exactly the wrong direction for a federal government already running $1.5 trillion deficits.
The voting record is public. Every appropriations vote and every member-requested earmark is searchable at clerk.house.gov and the appropriations subcommittee disclosure pages. After eighteen years in Congress, Kathy Castor’s record is filed alongside the rest of the 2021–2025 community-project-funding cycles.
What John Peters Will Do in Congress on Earmarks
As FL-14’s representative, John Peters will:
- Vote against every appropriations bill that includes member-directed earmarks not subjected to competitive grant review.
- Publish every earmark request he receives — and every request he denies — at the campaign and congressional office level, in real time, with the requesting organization named.
- Refuse to trade earmark requests for votes on broader spending bills.
- Cosponsor legislation to permanently ban member-directed earmarks in must-pass omnibus and continuing-resolution bills.
- Push appropriations dollars back into the competitive grant process, where they belong, with merit review and public scoring.
Hillsborough County families in Sun City Center, Brandon, Plant City, and Riverview already follow rules in their household budgets that Washington refuses to follow in its own. Federal money should be spent the way taxpayers expect it to be spent — through programs that compete for funding on the merits, not through hand-picked line-items inserted at the last minute by members of Congress.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a congressional earmark?
A congressional earmark is a line-item in a federal spending bill that directs money to a specific project, place, or recipient chosen by an individual member of Congress, outside the normal competitive grant process. Since 2021, the practice has operated under the rebranded label “community project funding,” but the underlying mechanism is the same as the pre-2011 earmark system.
How much do earmarks add to federal spending each year?
In recent appropriations cycles, House and Senate members combined to direct more than $15 billion per year in member-requested funding through community project funding line-items. That spending is layered on top of an annual federal deficit that routinely exceeds $1.5 trillion, contributing to the $36 trillion national debt and the $1 trillion in annual federal interest payments.
How can FL-14 voters see which earmarks their representative has requested?
Every appropriations vote and every member earmark request is public. Members are required to post their community project funding requests on their official congressional websites and through the House and Senate appropriations committees. The full record is searchable at clerk.house.gov and through the appropriations subcommittee disclosure pages. After eighteen years in Congress, Kathy Castor’s record is filed alongside the rest of the 2021–2025 cycle.
Are earmarks the same as pork barrel spending?
In substance, yes. “Pork barrel spending” is the older, more honest term for federal money directed to local projects that benefit a member’s political standing. “Earmark” was the bureaucratic label that replaced it. “Community project funding” is the most recent rebrand, used since the 2021 reinstatement. All three terms describe the same mechanism: an individual member of Congress directing federal dollars to a specific recipient outside competitive review.
What is John Peters’ position on earmarks?
John Peters opposes the current earmark system. He commits to voting against every appropriations bill that includes member-directed earmarks not subjected to competitive grant review, refusing to trade earmark requests for votes on broader spending bills, publishing every earmark request he receives — and every request he denies — in real time, and cosponsoring legislation to permanently ban member-directed earmarks in must-pass bills.
A Federal Budget That Stops Funding Pet Projects
Federal money does not belong to Congress. It belongs to the taxpayers in every district who earned it. Earmarks pretend otherwise — that an individual member of Congress, with no competitive process, no merit review, and no public scoring, should be able to redirect taxpayer dollars to recipients of their choice. Hillsborough County families do not run their household budgets that way. The federal government should not run its own budget that way either.
Donate to John Peters’ campaign or contact the campaign. See John’s full plan on fiscal responsibility, term limits, and the issues that matter most to FL-14.