Senate Appropriations Committee Meeting on Earmark Reform: What Happened
A secret 2006 meeting on earmark reform never produced a Senate task force. The changes came later. Congress added earmark disclosure rules in 2007, and earmarks were banned from 2011 until 2021, when they came back as Community Project Funding in the House and Congressionally Directed Spending in the Senate. As of November 2026, every request has to be posted publicly with the sponsor’s name. Earmarks are capped at 0.5% of discretionary spending in the House and 1% in the Senate, and the government is running on a stopgap law (H.R. 6500) until December 11, 2026, while the full-year FY2027 bills that carry earmarks are still unfinished.
The tip: a closed-door meeting on earmarks
In February 2006, the PorkBusters blog posted a tip from a Capitol Hill source. The source said the “Appropriations Committee Task Force on Earmark Reform” would meet that afternoon at 4 p.m. PorkBusters was a campaign against congressional earmarks run by bloggers. N.Z. Bear and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit started it in 2005.
At the time, Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee. The post asked readers to call his office and ask whether the meeting was open to the public, and if not, why not. It gave the office’s phone number and the name of his press secretary, Jenny Manley. That call to action belongs to the history of the campaign. Cochran left the Senate in April 2018 and died in May 2019, so the number no longer reaches his office.
Earmark reform was a heated topic in early 2006. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) had written in The Wall Street Journal on February 10, 2006, that “the American people are demanding real reform, not cosmetic measures.” In March 2006, a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee held a hearing on earmark transparency. Its record cites pork-barrel criteria developed with the bipartisan Congressional Porkbusters Coalition.
What Cochran’s office said
After a PorkBusters supporter contacted the office, Manley replied directly in the blog’s comments. N.Z. Bear then sent her follow-up questions by email and published the exchange, edited only for formatting. Here is the substance of it:
- Was a meeting of some or all Appropriations Committee members set for that day to deal with earmarks? Manley said there was none that she knew of, and none that Sen. Cochran took part in.
- Was the report of a 4 p.m. meeting in room S-128 wrong? Manley said the office knew of no meeting like that. She added that she had been in S-128 at 4 p.m. that day and saw no such meeting.
- Was committee leadership planning any effort on earmark reform, under the name “task force” or any other? Manley said several members of the committee, the Senate and Congress as a whole wanted to address earmark reform. She said Chairman Cochran had met with several of them and with the committee, was “carefully listening to their different ideas and proposals,” and expected that “a consensus on changes to the appropriations process will emerge.”
The two accounts
N.Z. Bear did not accept the office’s answer. He checked again with the source and wrote that he believed a meeting had been scheduled but was probably cancelled once it became public. He said he stood by the original post.
On February 21, PorkBusters added a short update saying it had confirmation that a meeting did, in fact, happen. The chairman’s office had said on the record that it knew of no such meeting, so the public record from that month contains both accounts. No formal Senate “Task Force on Earmark Reform” with that name produced a public report afterward.
What happened to earmark reform after 2006
The reforms Manley spoke of came in stages over the next 15 years. Some were rules and some were bans.
| Year | What changed | Who drove it |
|---|---|---|
| 2007 | House and Senate earmark disclosure rules adopted. The Senate rules were set by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. | New Democratic majorities in both chambers |
| 2008 | Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) named a five-senator task force led by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to study earmarks | Senate Republican Conference |
| November 2010 | House and Senate Republican conferences adopted voluntary earmark bans | Republican conferences |
| February 1, 2011 | Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) announced a moratorium covering FY2011 and FY2012 bills | Inouye, after President Obama said he would veto bills with earmarks |
| 2011 to 2020 | The moratorium was renewed through party rules and committee protocols. The disclosure rules stayed in place. | Both chambers |
| 2021 | Earmarks returned as Community Project Funding (House) and Congressionally Directed Spending (Senate), starting with FY2022 bills | House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Senate Appropriations Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) |
| FY2025 | No new earmarks, because Congress funded the government with a full-year continuing resolution | Congress |
| FY2026 | Earmarks returned in the final spending packages. Roll Call counted nearly $15.5 billion enacted as of February 2026. | Both chambers |
The Congressional Research Service has noted that the moratorium was never written into the formal rules of either chamber. It rested on party rules and committee protocols, which is why lawmakers could lift it without a floor vote on a rules change.
How earmarks work as of November 2026
Earmarks are back, but they now come with public disclosure and spending caps that did not exist in 2006. A House member or senator asks for money for a specific project in their state or district. The request is posted online, and the Appropriations Committee decides whether to include it in one of the 12 annual spending bills.
- Request. For FY2027, each House member could submit up to 20 Community Project Funding requests across all subcommittees. The House portal opened February 25, 2026, and closed with subcommittee deadlines from March 13 to March 27, 2026. In the Senate, Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) issued FY2027 request guidance on March 18, 2026.
- Disclosure. Members must name the recipient, its location and the purpose of the money. Requests are posted publicly, and for-profit companies cannot receive the funds.
- Caps. House earmarks are limited to 0.5% of discretionary spending. Senate Congressionally Directed Spending is limited to 1%, according to senators’ FY2027 guidance pages.
- Committee decision. Subcommittees choose which requests go into their bills, and the committee reports list each funded project with its sponsor.
- Enactment. Earmarks only take effect if the full-year bill becomes law. A continuing resolution does not create new ones.
The FY2027 numbers are large. The National Taxpayers Union Foundation counted 6,693 House requests totaling $8.68 billion. Punchbowl News reported about $8.2 billion set aside for Community Project Funding in the House Republican FY2027 bills. As of early November 2026, the House had passed 3 of the 12 FY2027 bills and the Senate had passed none. The continuing resolution signed September 2, 2026, keeps agencies funded through December 11, 2026.
Supporters of the current system, including leaders of both parties on the appropriations committees, say members know their districts better than agency staff do and that disclosure makes the process open. Critics, including the National Taxpayers Union Foundation and Citizens Against Government Waste, say the disclosures are spread across inconsistent committee documents and that the caps still allow billions in member-directed spending each year.
FAQ
Was there really a Senate Appropriations meeting on earmark reform in February 2006?
There are two accounts. Sen. Cochran’s press secretary, Jenny Manley, said the office knew of no such meeting and that she saw none in room S-128 at 4 p.m. PorkBusters said its source insisted the meeting was scheduled, and on February 21 it reported confirmation that one took place.
Who ran PorkBusters?
PorkBusters was a campaign against congressional earmarks run by bloggers from 2005 to about 2010. N.Z. Bear and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit started it. It asked readers to call lawmakers and track pledges to give up pet projects. It no longer operates, and the current site at the address is not connected to it.
When were earmarks banned, and when did they come back?
House and Senate Republicans adopted voluntary bans in November 2010. Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye announced a committee moratorium on February 1, 2011. Earmarks returned in 2021 for the FY2022 bills, as Community Project Funding in the House and Congressionally Directed Spending in the Senate.
How much do earmarks cost today?
The House caps them at 0.5% of discretionary spending and the Senate at 1%. Roll Call counted nearly $15.5 billion in FY2026 earmarks enacted as of February 2026. House members requested $8.68 billion for FY2027, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.
Can anyone see which lawmaker requested an earmark?
Yes. Each member must post their requests publicly with the recipient, location and purpose. The appropriations committees publish tables of funded projects with sponsor names. Watchdog groups say these tables are hard to combine because each committee formats them differently.
What happens to FY2027 earmarks if Congress passes another stopgap?
A continuing resolution extends existing funding levels and does not include new earmarks. FY2027 projects only get money if Congress enacts full-year appropriations bills. That is what happened in FY2025, when a full-year continuing resolution left that year’s earmark requests unfunded.
Sources
- Congress.gov, CRS Appropriations Status Table: FY2027
- Congressional Research Service, Overview of Continuing Appropriations for FY2027 (Division A of P.L. 119-103), R49353
- Congressional Research Service, Community Project Funding: House Rules and Committee Protocols, R46722
- U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, FY2027 appropriations guidance from Senators Collins and Murray
- The White House, H.R. 6500 signed into law, September 2026
- U.S. Senate hearing record, March 16, 2006 (Senate Hearing 109-684)
- Roll Call, “Earmarks flood spending bills after a year’s hiatus,” February 2026
- National Taxpayers Union Foundation, FY2027 House earmark request tracker
About this article
- Fact-checked before publication.
- Published · Updated
