House Republicans are struggling to move a labor, health and human services (HHS) appropriations bill containing more than 1,700 earmarks that would help lawmakers of both parties in their November reelection bids.
The district-specific projects, totaling about half a billion dollars, are tied to a Democratic minimum-wage increase that is anathema to the GOP, and no proposed solution has taken root.
Few lawmakers publicly concede the importance of earmarks to their own campaigns, but several acknowledge the benefit of voting to bring federal money home before the midterms.
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“We’re in an election season, and members have come to believe that the path to reelection is paved with pork,” Flake said. “This bill is full of it.”
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The pending projects include $20,000 that Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) secured to upgrade a student computer lab and $3 million for the City College of New York to establish the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service, named for the Harlem congressman, including an endowment, a library and an archive.
There’s money for the home districts of powerful party leaders, such as the $550,000 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi nabbed for San Francisco’s Exploratorium, and the $100,000 for student recruitment and retention at the I Know I Can program in House Republican Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce’s district in Columbus, Ohio.
Perhaps most important, the bill includes millions of dollars for politically vulnerable backbenchers in the form of earmarks like $400,000 for the Burke Medical Center in Georgia Democrat John Barrow’s 12th District and $350,000 for Lower Bucks Hospital in Pennsylvania Republican Mike Fitzpatrick’s 8th District.
The Lower Bucks Hospital gives $6 million-$7 million in care to the uninsured each year and is running a deficit, according to hospital spokesman Bob Harris. The federal money would go to a new telemetry unit.
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[And in a classic understatement,] “Obviously, members like earmarks,” Regula said. “There are a lot of them in our bill.”
