When Congress failed to pass bipartisan spending bills for the current fiscal year, lawmakers went back to their states and districts empty-handed, with no earmarked funding to show off for local projects.
Now, members are making up for lost time, loading up fiscal 2026 appropriations bills with billions of dollars in old and new earmarks — directed at everything from water infrastructure projects to research centers, airport upgrades and energy efficient housing.
Senior House and Senate Republicans are dominating the earmark bonanza for the third consecutive year, leading all lawmakers in earmarked dollars and notching major wins for water projects, according to an analysis by POLITICO’s E&E News. While Democrats have secured thousands of earmarks, they are receiving a much smaller portion of the overall funding.
Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the most senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is the top earmark winner by far, on track to come away with more than half a billion dollars for Kentucky.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), chair of the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, is once again in first place among all House members thanks to a massive earmark for a beleaguered lock and dam project.
Fiscal 2026 earmarks stand to benefit vulnerable members ahead of next year’s midterm elections, and they could present an outsize advantage for fiscally conservative Republicans, who will be able to campaign on the dollars they secured for local initiatives while simultaneously touting cuts they fought for in the broader funding negotiations.
House Republicans, for example, have included hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks for clean water and drinking water programs in their Interior-Environment bill despite proposing to slash that spending in the same bill.
Earmarks are also taking on new significance this year. Amid the Trump administration’s unprecedented efforts to withhold funds from states and nonprofits, earmarks could help fill in the gaps, injecting new funding into both Democratic priorities that the administration has targeted and major projects with bipartisan support.
The House and Senate have not yet released all of their spending bills, meaning more earmarks are coming. And the more than 8,000 earmarks included in the fiscal 2026 bills unveiled so far are not yet final; they could change during bicameral government funding negotiations in the coming weeks or months.
But members are desperate for the money after Congress left earmarks out of the continuing resolution funding the government through fiscal 2025. The local spending could end up at the center of any deal lawmakers try to pass this month to avoid a shutdown.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), a senior appropriator and chair of the House Freedom Caucus, has proposed another continuing resolution that would avoid a broader fiscal deal with Democrats — but with earmarks attached — to fund federal agencies beyond Sept. 30.
House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told reporters earlier this summer that Republicans could try to use earmarks as a point of leverage to help them get hesitant Democrats on board with keeping agencies largely flat-funded.
“I would hope we can do better,” Arrington said. “But I think the earmark piece may be a point of negotiating with the Democrats to do better.”
Across the six spending bills with earmarks that the Senate has unveiled so far, senators are set to reap more than $6.5 billion for their states. Across the House’s seven earmarked bills, members are in for nearly $8 billion in funding for projects in their districts.
In all, lawmakers submitted nearly 20,000 requests, and more than 8,000 of those have been included so far.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is not getting any earmarks. Still, committee leaders and other members of leadership have requested plenty. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has $75 million in joint funding with fellow South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds.
In the Senate, McConnell’s $435 million puts him ahead of the pack by a wide margin. He leads all senators in three of the six spending bills released so far. He also led all senators in fiscal 2025 earmarks, but those were never enacted.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) has more than $400 million in total earmarks, but nearly half of that sum is shared with Sen. Angus King (I-Maine). E&E News’ analysis credits lawmakers proportionally for their share of joint earmarks.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), chair of the Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee, is second in the Senate among individual requesters with $274 million secured. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and John Boozman (R-Ark.), two other Appropriations subcommittee chairs, each have more than $260 million to their names.
Across the Capitol, Fleischmann’s leading $251.4 million total is carried by a massive $213 million earmark for construction at Tennessee’s Chickamauga Lock.
Pennsylvania duo Chris Deluzio, a Democrat, and Guy Reschenthaler, the Republican chief deputy whip, have the second-largest earmark in the House, with $183.8 million going toward construction at the Montgomery Locks and Dam on the Ohio River.
And House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Rep. Clay Higgins, both Louisiana Republicans, secured the only other House earmark over $100 million: a $131.5 million allocation to advance a major hurricane protection system.
Army Corps projects win big
The Senate has not yet released its version of the Energy-Water bill amid an impasse among Appropriations leaders. Collins and Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) are crafting the bills on a bipartisan basis, but subcommittee Chair John Kennedy (R-La.) wants more cuts.
The House’s version is packed with earmarks for construction projects and engineering studies that would be conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers on federal waterways.
In fact, three of the top four earmarks recipients in the entire House are getting a majority of their funding through the Energy-Water bill, directing funds toward Army Corps projects on locks, dams or flood protection systems.
Tens of millions of additional dollars in the House bill would go to a host of other projects related to studies, construction, infrastructure maintenance, dredging, wastewater management and irrigation across dozens of states.
Fleischmann’s $213 million for the Chickamauga Lock would be the senior appropriator’s second major haul for the project in three years. He secured $236.8 million for the lock replacement effort in his fiscal 2024 Energy-Water bill.
In his request, Fleischmann noted that delays have necessitated more funding and that the upgrades will help make cargo transport more efficient. The lock was not affected by the Trump administration’s pause on certain Army Corps projects.
Joseph Cotton, a project manager at the Army Corps’ Nashville District, told the Dixie Contractor earlier this year that the project will help the Tennessee Valley Authority better operate the two nuclear plants — Watts Bar and Sequoyah — upstream of the lock.
The TVA relies on the corps “for transportation of heavy and large machinery, transformers, generators, turbines — what they need to produce nuclear power,” Cotton said.
Deluzio and Reschenthaler’s $183.8 million earmark for construction at Montgomery Locks and Dam on the Ohio River follows the unsuccessful effort of Pennsylvania’s two senators last year.
Deluzio and Reschenthaler requested $257 million for the project this year. They noted in their request that the locks modernization effort would help boost the region’s economy, support shipping and supply chains, and result in “significant environmental advantages.”
Scalise and Higgins’ $131.5 million for Army Corps work on the “Morganza to the Gulf” hurricane protection system similarly follows up on efforts last year that never came to fruition.
Scalise and former Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) had requested $93 million for fiscal 2025, noting that the project protects “an industrial base that supports about 20 percent of our nation’s domestically produced oil and natural gas.”
Scalise is getting an additional $3.3 million for the St. Tammany Parish Flood Risk Management project.
Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), vice chair on the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy, is also following up on some of his moot earmark requests from last year. He asked for $200 million for Army Corps work on the Sabine-Neches Waterway this year but is getting $9.1 million.
The channel is adjacent to the Sabine Pass and Golden Pass liquefied natural gas export terminals and serves as the nation’s top LNG export route. In his request, Weber called the Army Corps project “one of the most relevant and vital federal projects of our time.”
Water grants popular
EPA’s clean and drinking water revolving funds are once again a hugely popular source of cash for lawmakers’ earmarks — and once again a major target of House Republicans in their effort to reduce discretionary spending.
The proposed funding cuts, paired with the Trump administration’s dismissal of hundreds of EPA employees, threaten to kneecap the grants program and delay the disbursement of funds requested by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The House’s Interior-Environment bill contains more than $1 billion in earmarks, and they would all draw from the revolving funds. The Senate bill has about $733 million in total earmarks, and most of them would pull from the program.
Advocacy groups have warned that the revolving funds — a set of state-run federal loan programs dedicated to making drinking water safer, limiting storm runoff and improving sewage treatment systems — could run dry. And lawmakers have already expressed disappointment in EPA’s inability to quickly process earmarks and get the money out the door.
House appropriators included language in their Interior-Environment bill report stating that “the committee remains frustrated by the large number of [earmark] recipients that have still not received [assistance grant] funding and directs [EPA] to continue to provide updates to the Committee on plans to provide funding in a more timely manner.”
EPA last month implemented an artificial intelligence tool to quickly assess whether water infrastructure earmarks align with President Donald Trump’s executive orders. The agency rolled back the plan after POLITICO’s E&E News reported on it.
Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request proposes just $305 million for the EPA water grants — a cut of $2.46 billion relative to the current level. The administration said in the budget request that “the States should be responsible for funding their own water infrastructure projects.”
“In practice, the program has been heavily earmarked by the Congress for projects that are ultimately not repaid into the program and bypass States’ interest and planning,” the budget document reads.
The House’s Interior-Environment bill proposes $2.1 billion for the revolving funds — a reduction of about $662 million — with $1.1 billion of the total set aside for earmarked projects. The Senate’s Interior-Environment bill keeps funding flat for the revolving funds at around $2.8 billion.
Collins said in a press release that she was on track to secure more than $59 million for Maine water projects after the Appropriations Committee advanced its Interior-Environment bill with bipartisan support.
“Maintaining and upgrading drinking water and wastewater infrastructure is vital to strengthening the economic and environmental health of communities throughout Maine,” said Collins. “As the Chair of the Appropriations Committee, I will continue to advocate for this funding as the appropriations process moves forward.”
More environment, energy projects
Lawmakers have sprinkled the funding bills with a host of other earmarks to address environmental issues, research needs, water infrastructure, and clean and efficient energy programs.
In addition to having the most earmarked money, McConnell has the Senate’s single largest earmark: a $70 million request in the CJS bill to build a Center for Bioscience at the University of Louisville.
The Kentucky Republican also secured $24 million for a feasibility and environmental impact study for the expansion of the Hal Rogers Parkway, named after a top House appropriator.
Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has one of the largest earmarks in the Energy-Water bill: a $15 million sum for South Florida ecosystem restoration projects. Mast has for years requested similar funding.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the former chair of that committee, is getting $4 million for Texas A&M University’s Energy Proving Grounds workforce training program.
Several Democrats have smaller earmarks supporting energy efficiency and electrification grants for renters.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), ranking member on the House Space, Science and Technology Committee, is in line to get $850,000 for renewable energy infrastructure improvements at a San Benito County office building.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) secured $350,000 to support electric vehicle education and training at the College of DuPage.
