For fiscal year (FY) 2027, senators submitted thousands of requests for Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS), more commonly known as earmarks. These requests would direct federal funding to specific projects selected by lawmakers rather than through the ordinary competitive grant process.
The consolidated table published by the Senate Appropriations Committee contains 13,380 listed requests totaling $51.97 billion. Those figures, however, are somewhat misleading as they count jointly sponsored projects once for each requesting senator. NTUF sorted through the list to identify duplicative funding requests and identified 11,472 distinct earmarks totaling $46.47 billion in requested funding.
Congress imposed a moratorium on earmarks in 2011 following concerns about waste, favoritism, and corruption. The Senate revived the practice for FY 2022 with additional transparency and accountability requirements, including publication of a consolidated list of requests on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s website.
To make the information easier to review, National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) compiled the requests into a spreadsheet. The database of Senate earmarks compliments our recent analysis and spreadsheet of the House of Representatives’ FY 2027 earmark requests, and lets taxpayers, journalists, and policymakers examine the requests before the appropriations process is complete.
Methodology
Supporters view earmarks as an exercise of Congress’s constitutional power of the purse and argue that lawmakers are better positioned than executive agencies to identify local needs. Critics contend that the process encourages unnecessary spending, favors political influence over merit, and bypasses competitive federal grant programs.
After several years of a moratorium, the Senate revived earmarks for FY 2022 under the name “Congressionally Directed Spending,” with new rules intended to improve transparency, limit requests, and standardize disclosures.
Senators must certify that neither they nor their immediate families have a financial interest in a requested project. Each request must be disclosed online with the amount, recipient, and purpose; for-profit entities are ineligible; and total CDSs are capped at 1% of discretionary spending. The number of requests each senator may submit is also capped separately for each appropriations bill, with the limit varying by bill. The Appropriations Committee reviews each request, and submission does not guarantee funding.
Each senator submits a list of earmark requests to the relevant appropriations subcommittees and posts supporting documentation on the senator’s own website. The Appropriations Committee’s consolidated table is populated directly from these submissions.
Senators from the same state sometimes submit requests for the same recipient and project, but they do not always coordinate the wording or formatting of their submissions. As a result, recipient names and project descriptions may differ slightly, and, in some cases, the senators may submit the same project through different appropriations bills. NTUF contacted each pair of senators whose requests appeared to be for the same project in different bills. Several clarified that the same project may be eligible under multiple bills and that the senators will pursue the best possible outcome for their constituents while noting that no project is funded twice.
The Committee does not flag or consolidate these duplicate submissions at this stage because each submission must be counted toward the requesting senator’s per-bill cap. Duplicate requests that receive funding are reconciled later in the appropriations process.
Gathering and Reviewing the Senate’s Earmark Requests
The Senate has improved public access to earmark requests compared with previous appropriations cycles. The Appropriations Committee’s website contains a consolidated table of every request submitted by a senator. The table is searchable and includes useful filters, although it displays no more than 100 entries at a time and does not provide a readily accessible way to download the complete dataset.
NTUF downloaded all 13,380 entries from the Committee’s table. We first identified requests with matching recipients and dollar amounts and then compared their project descriptions and other available information to determine whether they represented the same project. This review allowed NTUF to combine duplicate listings and count each distinct earmark once. NTUF also reported several apparent errors in recipient information to the Committee, which subsequently corrected them.
The review identified 1,877 pairs of duplicate requests submitted under the same appropriations bill and 31 pairs submitted under different bills. The latter category consists of requests for the same recipient, amount, and project appearing under separate appropriations bills. After accounting for these duplicate listings, NTUF identified 11,472 distinct earmarks totaling $46.47 billion.
Each entry in NTUF’s unified database includes the sponsoring senator or senators, recipient, project purpose, requested amount, state, appropriations bill, and information for duplicate entries.
FY2027 Senate Earmarks at a Glance
Table 1 reconciles the committee’s published totals with NTUF’s adjusted count of distinct earmarks.
Table 1. Summary of Senate FY 2027 Earmark Requests After Accounting for Duplicates | |||||||
Category | Adjusted Number | Adjusted Cost | |||||
Earmarks with No Identified Duplicate | 9,564 | $40,961,603,000 | |||||
Duplicate Pairs Funded in the Same Appropriations Bill | 1,877 | $5,451,824,000 | |||||
Duplicate Pairs Funded in Different Appropriations Bills | 31 | $53,048,000 | |||||
Net Total | 11,472 | $46,466,475,000 | |||||
Of the 13,380 rows in the committee’s table, 9,564 had no identified duplicate. The remaining 3,816 rows represented 1,908 pairs. Counting each pair once reduces the total by 1,908 requests and approximately $5.5 billion.
Earmark Requests by Appropriations Bills
Table 2, below, shows the summary statistics counting each earmark request once.
Table 2. Summary of Earmark Requests in the 2027 Appropriations Bills | |||||||
Appropriations Bill | Non-Duplicate Earmark Requests | Net Requested Amount | |||||
Agriculture | 985 | $1,812,992,000 | |||||
Commerce, Justice, Science | 1,462 | $2,338,067,000 | |||||
Energy & Water Development | 606 | $9,424,526,000 | |||||
Homeland Security | 338 | $709,307,000 | |||||
Interior, Environment | 1,679 | $4,708,546,000 | |||||
Labor, HHS, Ed | 2,787 | $5,737,747,000 | |||||
Military Construction, Veterans Affairs | 380 | $11,961,523,000 | |||||
Transportation, HUD | 2,839 | $9,414,959,000 | |||||
Financial Services | 427 | $411,856,000 | |||||
Total* | 11,478 | $46,471,326,000 | |||||
* These figures do not account for duplicate earmarks submitted via different appropriation bills. | |||||||
Military Construction consumes a disproportionate share of earmark funding despite containing just over 400 total requests, averaging roughly $30 million per earmark. Energy and Water follows closely at about $15 million each, making these two subcommittees four to eight times larger per request than any other. The averages, which are far higher than the requests in the other appropriations bills, largely reflect the high cost of military facilities, water projects, and other major infrastructure.
Table 3, below, shows the total number of earmark requests in each table and the number and amount of duplicate earmarks cosponsored by pairs of senators.
Table 3. Total Number of Requests and Pairs of Earmark Requests in the 2027 Appropriations Bills | |||||||
Appropriations Bill | Total Earmark Requests | Total Requested Amount | Pair of Cosponsored Requests | Net Total of the Cosponsored Requests
| |||
Agriculture | 1,150 | $2,104,531,000 | 165 | $291,539,000 | |||
Commerce, Justice, Science | 1,719 | $2,718,279,000 | 257 | $380,212,000 | |||
Energy & Water Development | 691 | $10,250,934,000 | 85 | $826,408,000 | |||
Homeland Security | 386 | $792,359,000 | 48 | $83,052,000 | |||
Interior, Environment | 1,970 | $5,522,189,000 | 291 | $813,643,000 | |||
Labor, HHS, Ed | 3,209 | $6,305,814,000 | 422 | $568,067,000 | |||
Military Construction, Veterans Affairs | 428 | $13,110,257,000 | 48 | $1,148,734,000 | |||
Transportation, HUD | 3,326 | $10,688,633,000 | 487 | $1,273,674,000 | |||
Financial Services | 501 | $478,351,000 | 74 | $66,495,000 | |||
Total | 13,380 | $51,971,347,000 | 1877 | $5,451,824,000 | |||
Counting each duplicate once brings the total to 11,503 net requested earmarks, a 14% reduction from the gross figure of 13,380. For each senator, it means 1 in 6 projects were also proposed by the other senator from their state. That ratio, however, can vary widely, as some delegations have more co-sponsorships than others. Senators Merkley and Wyden from Oregon are at the top of the list with 264 duplicate earmarks. They are followed closely by Connecticut’s Blumenthal and Murphy with 253 pairs and Virginia’s Kaine and Warner with 224.
Unsurprisingly, duplicates are concentrated in the bills with the most earmarks. Transportation-HUD and Labor, HHS, and Education contain 48.4% of the pairs, mirroring the high volume of earmarks in those bills. Between them, they have 6,535 gross earmarks requests, almost half of the entire list. This is not surprising, however, as the concentration of duplicates in each bill is fairly consistent. Nearly 28% of earmarks are part of a duplicate pair, ranging from 22.4% in Military Construction to 29.9% in Commerce, Justice, and Science. Therefore, duplicate earmarks are not specific to a particular appropriations subcommittee, just a standard part of the process.
Which Members Requested the Most Funding?
The number and value of earmark requests varied widely among senators. Some senators submitted more than 300 requests totaling well over $1 billion, while others submitted fewer than 10 requests totaling less than $100 million. Senator Jim Risch submitted only one request, totaling $6.7 million. The table below shows the senators who requested the largest amounts of funding, most of whom sought more than $1 billion. A complete list of the number of earmarks requested by each senator is available here.
Table 4: Top 20 Senators by Total Requested Funding | |||
Rank | Requesting Senator | Number of Earmarks | Requested Funding |
1 | Senator Luján (D-NM) | 294 | $2,495,264,000 |
2 | Senator Heinrich (D-NM) | 280 | $2,023,607,000 |
3 | Senator Warnock (D-GA) | 310 | $1,881,134,000 |
4 | Senator Padilla (D-CA) | 334 | $1,752,550,000 |
5 | Senator Schiff (D-CA) | 320 | $1,453,837,000 |
6 | Senator Slotkin (D-MI) | 261 | $1,360,431,000 |
7 | Senator Ossoff (D-GA) | 218 | $1,257,835,000 |
8 | Senator Peters (D-MI) | 252 | $1,221,618,000 |
9 | Senator Wicker (R-MS) | 235 | $1,104,802,000 |
10 | Senator Durbin (D-IL) | 115 | $1,066,215,000 |
12 | Senator Kennedy (R-LA) | 148 | $1,041,363,000 |
12 | Senator Hyde-Smith (R-MS) | 226 | $1,026,532,000 |
13 | Senator Hirono (D-HI) | 186 | $1,015,511,000 |
14 | Senator Schatz (D-HI) | 202 | $952,266,000 |
15 | Senator Gallego (D-AZ) | 224 | $915,119,000 |
16 | Senator Kelly (D-AZ) | 219 | $900,981,000 |
17 | Senator Smith (D-MN) | 236 | $899,354,000 |
18 | Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) | 237 | $879,333,000 |
19 | Senator Cassidy (R-LA) | 106 | $875,868,000 |
20 | Senator Baldwin (D-WI) | 114 | $862,753,000 |
Senators Who Requested No Earmarks
Twenty-two senators submitted no earmark requests for FY 2027, with many continuing to observe the earmark moratorium adopted in 2011. Table 5 lists those senators, who cite a number of reasons including the growing deficit and concerns about the potential for corruption and favoritism.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) is vehemently opposed to the earmark process. In 2024, he introduced S.Res. 580 to put an end to Congressionally Directed Spending, and he has spoken against earmarks on many occasions. He ties them directly to the country’s growing debt, saying, “There’s good reason why earmarks were banned in government funding bills for years—they should be. Funneling money into pet projects and special interests, wasting millions of tax dollars on bridges to nowhere makes our debt out of control.” The problem, as he sees it, is the wasteful spending earmarks encourage.
Sen. Mike Lee, along with Sen. Steve Daines, takes it a step further. The two sponsored the Earmark Elimination Act of 2021, which would ban earmarks permanently. Lee’s attempt was continuing the 2011 ban: “Banning earmarks in 2011 was the first step in reforming Congress’s dysfunctional budget process. Much more work needs to be done, but backsliding into the corrupt and corrupting earmarks racket should not be an option.” Daines made a similar point, but focused on the favoritism and corruption earmarks invite: “Earmarks do nothing but add to the toxic, swampy culture that DC’s known for. These back-room deals promote pay-for-play behavior that make lobbyists rich on the taxpayer's dime. It’s time we get rid of earmarks once and for all.”
Recommendations
The Senate has made significant progress in improving earmark transparency, but there is still room for improvement. Although the Appropriations Committee’s consolidated table is searchable and includes useful filters, users can view only 100 entries at a time and there is no readily apparent way to download the complete dataset.
Without a simple download option, taxpayers can search individual entries but cannot easily sort, aggregate, or otherwise analyze the data. This makes it difficult to answer even basic questions, such as how much funding a senator requested or how much would go to a particular recipient.
The Committee should provide the full table in a downloadable, machine-readable format. Senators from the same state should also better coordinate joint submissions and standardize the spelling and formatting of recipient names and project information. This would improve transparency and simplify the earmark review process.
In several cases, NTUF found requests submitted by the same senator under the same appropriations bill that had similar recipient names, amounts, or descriptions. Because Senate rules prohibit duplicate funding for the same project, NTUF assumed these were separate requests. However, some descriptions were too vague to clearly explain how the projects differed. Senators should be required to provide enough detail in their disclosures for taxpayers to understand the distinct purpose of each request.
Conclusion
Congress would be better off without earmarks. Their history of waste, favoritism, and abuse led lawmakers to impose the 2011 moratorium, and restoring them risks reviving many of the same problems. But, as long as Congress permits lawmakers to direct federal funding to favored projects, taxpayers should have clear and timely information about who requested the money, who would receive it, and how it would be used.
For FY 2027, senators submitted 11,472 distinct earmark requests totaling $46.47 billion. NTUF’s database makes those requests easier to examine by accounting for duplicate submissions and consolidating information on sponsors, recipients, amounts, and project purposes. The Senate’s disclosure system is a significant improvement over past practices, but providing downloadable data, improving coordination on joint requests, and requiring sufficiently detailed project descriptions would give taxpayers a better opportunity to scrutinize these spending decisions before they are finalized.