If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Q.What Are Political Earmarks?

The Congressional Research Service, the public policy research arm of the U.S. Congress, defines them as:
“Provisions associated with legislation(appropriations or general legislation) that specify certain congressional spending priorities or in revenue bills that apply to a very limited number of individuals or entities. Earmarks may appear in either the legislative text or report language(committee reports accompanying reported bills and joint explanatory statement accompanying a conference report).”

For example, say you have a bill that would develop high speed rail around the country for 1 billion(round number) to be administered by the department of transportation. The usual allocation of the funds would go through an application process administered by the executive branch. But say a senator puts an earmark in that 1 billion, that 100 million of it is for their state or awarded to a specific person/persons in particular. That means if the bill passes, 1/10th of that budget will go to that state or person/persons and only the remainder will be subject to the usual process. That’s an earmark.