Rep. Ted Budd Moves to Eliminate Over 2,300 Earmarks

Press Release

Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) has proposed a series of amendments to every FY 2022 appropriations bill that eliminates 2,378 pork-barrel earmarks worth $3.85 billion.

Rep. Budd said in a statement:

"The first appropriations process in the new earmark era is unsurprisingly a pork-barrel fiasco. If an earmarked project is truly worthy of taxpayer funding, then it should be proposed individually on the House floor or as a competitive grant. Removing this pork-barrel spending would show taxpayers across the country that politicians in the Washington Swamp actually viewed every taxpayer dollar as sacred."

Background:

On February 18, 2021, Reps. Budd and Ralph Norman introduced the Earmark Elimination Act. The bill would permanently ban congressional earmarks.

On March 10, 2021, Rep. Budd led a coalition of 10 Senators and 25 House members to send a letter to the House and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairs expressing strong opposition to the formal return of pork-barrel earmarks.

On June 28, 2021, Rep. Budd proposed eliminating all 1,474 earmarks out of the House's surface transportation bill, which was the first spending bill to contain earmarks since 2010. This would have saved taxpayers $5.66 billion.

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