Our friend and the former chairman of Open the Books, Tom Smith, is on a crusade to end the scourge of spending earmarks. Earmarking is when members carve out projects – airports, parking lots, courthouses, sports stadiums, bridges to nowhere, green energy grants – for their own districts. Sometimes, as we learned this week about Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, they enrich their own family to the tune of millions of dollars.

Smith finds that last year, “the top 62 earmarkers in the House were Republicans.  Eight of the 10 earmarkers in the Senate were Republicans.  Senator Collins voted for earmarks equivalent to $2,640 for every family in that state.  Several Republican senators voted tens of millions of dollars to airports and universities that are now named after them. In the Senate, the largest earmarker was Mitch McConnell whose earmarks totaled $498,935,000.”

John Hart of Open the Books finds that this pork-barrel spending is on the rise again and is approaching pre-ban levels:

Trump and DOGE should bring it to an end. Supporters of earmarks say the savings are minimal. Wrong. When earmarks were banned, taxpayers saved $141 billion. The late Senator Tom Coburn was right: “Earmarks are the gateway drug to spending addiction.”