Unfettered by potential challenges to his position after deciding to step aside, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has returned to the earmarking game with gusto, taking over the top slot in his chamber with almost a half-billion dollars set aside for Kentuckians in the fiscal 2025 spending bills.

McConnell joins three first-time earmarkers on the Republican side — Indiana’s Todd Young, Kansas’ Roger Marshall and North Carolina’s Ted Budd — to push the number of GOP senators seeking home-state projects to 21, the highest since earmarks’ return three years ago. They join all Democrats — except for Montana’s in-cycle Jon Tester and New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan — plus the four independents who get committee assignments from, or caucus with, the majority.

So far, across the eight earmarked bills Senate appropriators have voted out of committee — the Homeland Security measure hasn’t yet been released — there are 3,686 projects worth $7.74 billion. While Democrats and affiliated independents dominate the number of projects, the majority has been charitable with the money, allowing Republicans to claim 46 percent of the earmarked dollars.

That generosity has allowed the smaller group of GOP earmarkers to dominate the rankings for dollars secured — including eight out of the top 10, as well as the top seven — in CQ Roll Call’s analysis, which includes proportional credit for projects secured jointly by more than one member.

Fifteen of the top 20 earmarkers are Senate Appropriations members, including McConnell, R-Ky., who has served on the panel longer than anyone currently there save Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash.; they both joined in 1993. He plans to refocus his attention on the panel in the next Congress after relinquishing his leadership post, with many expecting him to snag a subcommittee gavel or ranking member slot, depending on November’s election results.

‘Punches above its weight’

McConnell is already using his considerable clout to make sure the Bluegrass State is taken care of — “ensuring Kentucky always punches above its weight,” as his webpage dedicated to earmark requests puts it.

McConnell’s $498.9 million worth of projects in eight of the Senate’s new appropriations bills is even more striking considering he sat out the earmarking process in each of the first three years after Democratic leaders brought it back in 2021, after a decadelong absence.

His conference is still predominantly opposed to earmarking, though it’s grown slightly in popularity. And McConnell has perennially faced whispers about his dedication to the conservative cause, or at least how that’s been interpreted in recent years.

Between spending hawks suspicious of his appropriator background — he spent about a decade as top Republican on the foreign aid subcommittee — his previous taste for earmarking and Trumpian Republicans who can’t forgive his frosty relationship with the former president and support for Ukraine, McConnell has toed a careful line.

The GOP leader’s decision to step down at the end of this year, which came a few months before the deadline for earmark requests, changed all that. McConnell immediately became a powerful voice for more defense spending and aid to U.S. allies, while behind the scenes he’s been taking care of home-state interests.

That includes $218 million in the Senate’s fiscal 2025 Energy-Water bill — the largest single project in the eight bills — to complete the long-running Kentucky Lock and Dam project, which backers say needs a bigger navigation lock to allow the maximum barge traffic the Tennessee River can accommodate.

McConnell says he’s already helped deliver more than $1 billion in federal funds toward the project over the years, and the fiscal 2025 dollars are all but guaranteed given the $218 million is also included in the House’s Energy-Water bill, courtesy of House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James R. Comer, R-Ky. Comer is his chamber’s top earmarker as a result.

[Earmarks in House spending bills increase over last year’s versions]

Since CQ Roll Call’s earmark leaderboards give proportionate credit for joint requests, in a final spending package totals for both Comer and McConnell would drop as each would see half the lock project’s dollars credited to them.

But McConnell right now would likely remain the top earmarker in both chambers, since the current No. 2 — Senate Appropriations ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine — doesn’t have enough requests for the Homeland Security bill to overtake McConnell. He hasn’t put in requests for that measure.

Other big-ticket earmarks in Senate bills include:

• $205 million in the Energy-Water bill for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Montgomery Locks and Dam project in Beaver County, Pa., requested by that state’s Democratic senators, Bob Casey and John Fetterman.
• $186.2 million for the corps’ Sault Ste. Marie replacement lock project, sought by Michigan Democrats Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow, whose request would supplement the corps’ own request and bring the total for that project in the bill to $450.3 million.
• $90 million for a water treatment plant at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in the Military Construction-VA bill, requested by Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.
• $90 million for a water treatment plant at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, sought by Hawaii Democrats Brian Schatz and Mazie K. Hirono.
• $75 million for a modernized aircraft hangar for the Army Reserve at Fort Knox (McConnell).

To see all of the earmarks — or “congressionally directed spending” as senators call it — in the fiscal 2025 Senate bills, as well as all of the requests that individual senators submitted to the Appropriations Committee, see here.

The Transportation-HUD bill, typically the most popular for earmarks, again leads for total dollars at $2.1 billion; while that’s significantly less than the House version, senators make up for that with $1.4 billion in the Labor-HHS-Education bill, which House Republicans don’t allow earmarks in.

Those two bills alone account for over 2,000 individual earmarks, about 55 percent of all the projects included so far in the Senate spending bills.

The bottom rung of Senate earmarkers, those with less than $40 million credited to them, includes first-time GOP participants Young, Budd and Marshall as well as Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who angered many of his colleagues with protracted holds on military nominations for much of last year.

Young secured $18.5 million for three EPA water infrastructure projects in the Interior-Environment bill. Marshall has just one request — $4.2 million in the Agriculture bill for water management around Rattlesnake Creek in central Kansas — shared with fellow home-state Republican Jerry Moran, a senior appropriator.

The only Democrat in the lowest category is New Jersey’s Bob Menendez, who is set to resign after his conviction on federal corruption charges. The only earmark he secured on his own is $500,000 for a senior center in the Borough of Hopatcong, though his name is also attached to 17 other projects also requested by Cory Booker, D-N.J., and in two cases, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.

Budd-ing in

Budd’s inclusion on the list, with $15 million to build a combat arms training and maintenance complex at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, is the biggest surprise.

The freshman senator made a name for himself as an earmarking foe during his House career and his Senate campaign as he was running to succeed Sen. Richard M. Burr, R-N.C., who didn’t seek reelection in 2022. He sought to keep the practice from returning when House GOP leaders were mulling that prospect, and he’s introduced legislation to permanently ban earmarks.

“Nothing epitomizes what is wrong with Washington more than pork-barrel spending in the form of congressional earmarks,” then-Rep. Budd wrote in a letter to top Democrats in early 2021 that he spearheaded with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “We cannot imagine a worse way to build back trust in Congress than to resurrect a system that has been roundly rejected as corruptive and wasteful for decades.”

At the beginning of the 118th Congress, Budd co-sponsored a resolution that would close what backers called a “loophole” in disclosure rules so that earmarks in House bills being considered by the Senate would have to be identified.

“Too often, earmarks are the currency that entices Congress to spend recklessly and wastefully,” Budd said at the time. “At a minimum, all earmarks, regardless of which chamber they originate from, must be public before they are voted on.”

Budd didn’t request any earmarks in his first year in the Senate, but this year he submitted over $284 million worth for appropriators’ consideration, all in the Military Construction-VA bill. The $15 million he received for the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base project is down from the $41 million he requested, and which would be authorized in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill.

Appropriators didn’t fund Budd’s other requests.

His earmark disclosure page specifies that Budd only supports “milcon” projects — no other kind of earmarks — and further, he stipulates they must have been identified as part of a Pentagon “future years defense program,” on an unfunded priorities list or among projects identified as needing “cost-to-complete” funds due to unforeseen needs.

Still, Budd’s earmark jumps out, considering his past opposition to the practice.

Asked for comment on his change of heart, a Budd spokesperson said: “As a member of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Budd’s top priority is to make sure the men and women at North Carolina’s military bases have the resources necessary to keep our nation strong and safe.”