ANALYSIS — House Republicans have sprinkled their fiscal 2026 appropriations bills with more home-district projects than they did last year though with slightly fewer funds allocated to earmarks overall, at just shy of $8 billion.
A CQ Roll Call analysis found that across the seven House spending bills with “community project funding,” Republicans claimed about 62 percent of the total funding, or $4.9 billion.
That’s despite Democrats securing 62 percent of the more than 5,000 individual projects; far more Democrats request earmarks, though they are increasing in popularity with Republicans. Just 49 House Republicans this year refrained from asking for projects, down from 67 a year earlier.
The list of top earmarkers is dominated by senior Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee — no surprise there — led by Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Chuck Fleischmann.
The Tennessee Republican is again atop the House earmark rankings, reclaiming a spot he lost last year at this time to Kentucky Rep. James R. Comer, the Oversight and Government Reform panel chairman.
[Earmarks increase in House’s fiscal 2025 spending bills]
Fleichmann’s $251.4 million haul blows away the competition, with the next highest total — $141 million — belonging to the dean of the House, Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky.
Rogers and Fleischmann are among seven House Republican appropriators in the top 10 for total earmarked funds in the fiscal 2026 bills.
The others are, in order:
- Pennsylvania’s Guy Reschenthaler, the GOP chief deputy whip, with $122.1 million.
- Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma, with $120.4 million.
- Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Steve Womack of Arkansas, with $108.5 million.
- Jake Ellzey of Texas, with $85.3 million.
- Fellow Texan John Carter, the Military Construction-VA subcommittee chairman, with $84.3 million.
A total of 12 GOP appropriators round out the top 20 earmarkers, with Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris in the No. 20 spot with $55.6 million. Harris, R-Md., does double duty as Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee chairman, and doesn’t always see eye to eye on spending issues as some of his Freedom Caucus colleagues.
Army Corps mega projects
As in the past, Fleischmann’s total is padded by one mega earmark: another $213 million in his subcommittee’s bill for the Army Corps of Engineers’ long-running Chickamauga Lock replacement project, after he secured $236.8 million for it in fiscal 2024.
The Chickamauga Lock project is the single largest in the fiscal 2026 House spending bills, followed by $183.8 million for the Army Corps’ Montgomery Lock and Dam project on the Ohio River.
That’s a joint request from Reschenthaler and Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., which pushes both members into the top 10 earmarkers category; CQ Roll Call credits lawmakers proportionally for shares of joint projects.
In fact, the Ohio River project is enough to make Deluzio No. 6 in the overall rankings, the only Democrat to crack the top 40. Deluzio represents a competitive district, winning a second term last November by a 54 percent to 46 percent margin.
A third massive Army Corps construction project, worth $131.5 million in fiscal 2026, is for ongoing hurricane and storm damage risk reduction work being done about 60 miles southwest of New Orleans along the Louisiana coast.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise co-requested the funds for the so-called Morganza to the Gulf of Mexico project with Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., a Freedom Caucus member, pushing them both into the top 10.
GOP appropriators and other party grandees secured many of the largest individual projects. Outside of Fleischmann’s Tennessee River lock, Womack secured the second-largest solo earmark, $59 million for a four-lane highway aimed at relieving congestion in Springdale, Ark.
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., got $50 million for a new aircraft maintenance hangar for the Army Reserve stationed at Fort Knox, helping him get to No. 13 in the overall rankings.
Ellzey took a big step in the rankings, from 17th in the fiscal 2025 bills to 8th this time. That’s thanks in large part to his own aircraft hangar earmark, $50 million directed to Naval Air Station Fort Worth.
Rogers secured $37 million for a highway project in Somerset; $36.5 million to build a highway in Frankfort and $20 million in his Commerce-Justice-Science measure for first responder communication systems, which will be run by the nonprofit Center for Rural Development.
Twenty-three lawmakers in all secured at least $50 million worth of earmarks.
Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., who runs the House GOP campaign arm, got $50 million, mostly for upgrades at the Army’s Fort Bragg. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., whose race Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales considers a Toss-up next November, also broke into the $50 million club with several projects throughout her coastal Virginia district.
Another perennially vulnerable Republican, Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Ken Calvert, is ranked 15th on this year’s list.
Calvert, R-Calif., whose race is ranked Lean Republican, secured $67.3 million through 15 separate earmarks in the Transportation-HUD bill — the biggest pot of community project funding by far, with over $3.7 billion spread among 2,369 earmarks.
While the biggest states by population — California, Texas, Florida, New York — still receive the largest amounts of funding given their larger House delegations, all but Florida would receive below-average community project funding per capita.
By contrast relatively smaller states — Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma — top the list of states’ per capita earmark funds thanks to their influential representation in leadership and on the Appropriations Committee.
More Republicans partake
The increased popularity of earmarks among Republicans this year is driven in large part by freshman members taking part. But there are five House Republicans requested funding for their districts this year after choosing not to participate in the last cycle.
Second-term Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo., got $22.8 million worth after joining the Appropriations panel earlier this year. His projects include $6 million to expand a runway at Warrensburg’s Skyhaven Airport and $6 million to establish an agriculture workforce training center at State Fair Community College in Sedalia.
Illinois’ Mary Miller, a member of the Freedom Caucus, received $15 million after sitting out previously. That’s primarily in one project, $9 million for the Army Corps to improve locks and dams on the Mississippi River.
Other new earmarkers are South Carolina’s William R. Timmons IV, Texas’ Roger Williams and Virginia’s Rob Wittman.
Two House Republicans went in the other direction.
Georgia’s Mike Collins, who announced Monday he is running for Senate against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, didn’t request any projects this year. Last year, Collins had one project included in the bills, $190,000 for an economic development initiative at Georgia State University.
Texas’ Keith Self is the other Republican who sat out this year after having $6 million included in bills last year. Those projects were $4 million for technology for the Frisco Police Department and $2 million for a highway improvement project.
Deluzio is one of just five Democrats in the top 100. Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., is next, down at No. 43.
Two California appropriators, Norma J. Torres and Pete Aguilar, the Democratic Caucus chair, are at 83rd and 96th, respectively. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., is No. 98.
Back on the board
One Democratic member of the Appropriations panel, embattled Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, has a big jump in earmarked dollars — just over $1 million to buy laboratory equipment for Texas A&M International University — from last year when he received zero.
That’s good for second to last among 390 lawmakers with earmarks, beating out only American Samoa’s nonvoting delegate, Republican Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen.
Cuellar was shut out of the fiscal 2025 bills despite requesting $16 million, after he and his wife Imelda were indicted last spring and accused of taking $600,000 in bribes from the government of Azerbaijan and a Mexico City bank.
The $1.039 million he’d receive in the fiscal 2026 Commerce-Justice-Science bill is still well short of the $17.8 million he requested this year.
Cuellar, who is currently due in court on Sept. 22, just suffered another big setback when Texas Republicans on Wednesday proposed redrawing their district lines to force him and other Democrats into more GOP-leaning constituencies.
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