Senate appropriators may have kept up the earmarking pace even after several heavyweights retired at the end of the 117th Congress, but a handful of states are feeling the loss.
Alabama, Vermont, Oklahoma, Missouri and North Carolina combined would see nearly $1.4 billion less in “congressionally directed spending,” as senators call earmarks, in the chamber’s fiscal 2024 appropriations bills compared to fiscal 2023 Senate bills. That’s about four-fifths of the $1.7 billion decline of earmarked funds across 18 states compared with the versions Senate appropriators released last year.
Luckily for 21 other states, new Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., and ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, still had plenty of money to spread around — just $38 million less than the panel’s former leaders had the previous year, for a total of more than $7.7 billion. States seeing their earmark totals increase would receive about $1.7 billion more than the previous year.
