Lawmakers were set to bring over $15 billion back to their home states. Then Congress passed the GOP's government funding bill.

• Lawmakers had secured more than $15 billion in "earmarks" for projects in their districts.
• But a recent government funding bill written by the GOP didn't include it.
• Now, it's vulnerable Republicans who stand the most to lose.

On a Tuesday morning this past October, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler made a splashy announcement: He'd secured nearly $33 million in federal funding for more than a dozen projects across his New York district.

"From day one, I have been laser-focused on delivering the tangible results our communities need, especially when it comes to federal funding," Lawler said while flanked by a slew of local officials in front of the Rockland County Sheriff's Office, which was set to receive more than $7 million.

$5 million for sidewalks and traffic signals in Ramapo. $2.25 million for water tank improvements in Pleasantville. $1.25 million for a sewer system in North Salem. These so-called "earmarks," known officially as "community project funding" or "congressionally directed spending," are one of the most direct ways that lawmakers can help their constituents. They also happen to make for a good political talking point, and Election Day was just three weeks away.

The funding still had to be voted on, but Lawler had good reason to believe that it would eventually come. Congress has generally managed to pass full-year spending bills each year, even if far behind schedule.

The congressman went on to win reelection, but the millions in federal largesse that he promised on that October morning were ultimately never signed into law.

That's because the GOP-written funding bill that Congress passed this month included no funding for earmarks, affecting not just Lawler and his district, but the hundreds of other House members and senators in both parties who had each worked to secure earmarks. All told, it's a loss of more than $15 billion across thousands of projects.

Those communities will have to make do without that funding, at least for now. And in an ironic twist, it's the GOP's more vulnerable members who stand to lose the most politically.

How did we get here?

It's a little bit complicated.

Congress was supposed to pass a bipartisan, full-year spending bill by the end of December. But after President Donald Trump won the presidential election, Republicans pushed to delay the final passage of the spending bills into March in order to allow the president and his new majorities in Congress to shape the legislation, which was still being negotiated between top Democrats and Republicans in both chambers.

That led to a bipartisan agreement on a so-called "continuing resolution," which largely maintains federal spending at current levels for a short period of time. The original agreement was blown up by Elon Musk and other hardline conservatives, and after two days of chaos, Congress passed a short-term funding bill in late December that moved the next shutdown deadline to March.

Then Trump took office, and DOGE began shuttering federal agencies, freezing funding, and firing federal workers. In the midst of bipartisan negotiations over the funding bill, Democrats pushed for provisions that would stop Trump from withholding funding already approved by Congress.

Republicans refused, and negotiations broke down, raising the likelihood of a government shutdown. Eventually, the GOP came up with their own solution: a continuing resolution that would extend through the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends on September 30.

But continuing resolutions are supposed to be temporary, and they don't include earmarks.

Senators in both parties had secured $7.85 billion in earmarks, while House members secured more than $8 billion. Accounting for some overlap, the total funding would have amounted to somewhere between $15 billion and $15.5 billion, according to a congressional aide.

The bill ultimately passed on a roughly party-line vote, with all but two Republicans voting for it.

'Those types of projects really, really, help a community'

For Democrats, the political argument on the loss of earmarks is relatively straightforward. Almost all of them didn't vote for the bill, in large part because it handed more spending discretion to the Trump administration. In the days before the GOP bill passed, Democrats argued for another short-term bill to avoid a shutdown and allow for more time to negotiate a full spending bill.

"The absence of community project funding is another example of Republicans making the decision to hand over the power of the purse to Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the administration," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters this week.

With the GOP hoping to defend their majority, it's now some of the party's more vulnerable members who are the most politically exposed by the lapse in earmarks. These aren't the kinds of DOGE-led cuts that Republicans have been cheering on. Lawmakers fought to secure that funding for local governments and organizations in their districts. And in the House, Republicans were set to receive roughly two-thirds of the funding.

Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke had secured $10 million for a water system in a small town in a remote portion of his Montana district, hoping that the investment would allow the community to build more housing. "Washington, DC doesn't know where Seely Lake is. I know where Seeley Lake is," Zinke told BI. "Those types of projects really, really, help a community. That's who I work for."

Both Zinke and Lawler hold seats that Democrats targeted in 2024 and are likely to target again next year. For now, both men say they're confident that most of the funding they promised to their constituents will eventually come, perhaps in next year's spending bills. "We'll just resubmit it," Lawler said. "They're not dead," Zinke said.

A spokesperson for Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the GOP chair of the House Appropriations Committee, told BI in a statement that guidance for future earmark requests will be "released in the following months"

Like other Republicans interviewed for this story, the spokesperson blamed Democrats for the loss of the funding, arguing that their demand for restrictions on Trump's impoundment moves was unreasonable. "Democrats hurt thousands of communities by using government funding negotiations as a weapon in pursuit of their contempt for President Trump," the spokesperson said.

While some Republicans are confident that they'll be able to secure the funding eventually, Democrats now feel uncertain whether they can rely on what has long been a bipartisan process.

"I don't know whether they're gonna ask for submissions again," Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts told BI. "I mean, I don't want to waste time if they're not going to do it."