Timed for release late last week (almost as if they hoped no one would take notice) the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies, made public its “Community Project” list. That’s earmarks for the uninitiated. Yes, earmarks are back, and Members of Congress are bellying up to the bar for some parochial projects.

The bill contained a total of eleven earmarks worth $199.2 million, for an average value of $18.1 million. Of that total, Republicans nabbed nine earmarks worth $173 million. The other two, worth $26.2 million went to Democrats. So much for the “fiscal conservatism” of these House Republicans.

Slicing that salami (see what we did there?) a little differently, six earmarks worth $69.7 went to Appropriators. So, members of the Appropriations Committee, who are 7.5% of House, got a whopping 54.5% of military construction earmarks in pure numbers and 34.9% by value. It’s good to be an Appropriator!

The table of successful earmark requests is noticeably smaller this year than the last time we were databasing earmarks back in FY 2010. That year we identified 109 Military Construction earmarks worth $578.9 million, meaning the average earmark cost $5.3 million. Of that total, 77 projects went to Democrats and were worth $356.8 million. Another 25 projects went to Republicans and were worth $179.4 million. The other seven projects were requested on a bipartisan basis.

So, although the number of earmarks dropped considerably, from 109 to eleven, the average value more than tripled from $5.3 million to $18.1 million. Inflation? We think not. More likely, a pent up of taste for parochial projects is finally being partially satiated.

Remember the so-called “Unfunded Priorities Lists” (UPLs) of each of the military services. We’ve long pilloried this practice, and you can read our recent thoughts on it. Our position is, if it didn’t make it into a Pentagon budget request of more than $700 billion, it ain’t a “priority”. Come on!

Of the eleven earmarks, nine of them are on the unfunded list of one of the military services. But two of those, a Child Development Center at Lackland Air Force Base and a Lighterage and Small Craft Facility at Blount Island, are funded at less than the request. The Child Development Center was requested on the UPL for $29 million but funded at $22 million. The facility at Blount Island was requested at $69.4 million but received $7 million – presumably a “down payment” on the full facility. And the Vehicle Maintenance Shop at Camp Bullis is funded at $10 million of a request for $16.4 million.

Of the two military construction projects that weren’t requested at all – not in the President’s Budget Request and not on any of the UPLs – both were requested by Republican House Members.

• $25 million for a Welding Facility at Anniston Army Depot – Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL)
• $27 million for a Wellfield Expansion Resilience Project at Fort Drum – Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)

We point out that two of the more expensive earmarks on the overall list of earmarks ($27 million and $25 million) are the ones that weren’t requested in either the full budget or the UPLs.

Cue the Members of Congress saying, “I will never apologize for requesting a project for the good of our service members…blahbetty blah blah blah.”

This is the dawn of the new earmark era. We’ll be watching closely.

June 29, 2021: This post has been updated. An earlier version of this post inaccurately cited a $36 million project for Barksdale AFB requested by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) and a $10 million project for Camp Bullis requested by Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) as being not included in a UPL.