'Half-billion dollars for Kentuckians': Mitch McConnell returns 'to the earmarking game with gusto'

Although Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is stepping down as GOP leader in the U.S. Senate this years, he plans on serving out the rest of his six-year term — which doesn't end until January 2027. And he is still trying to get Kentucky as many federal funds as he can, according to Roll Call reporters Peter Cohn and Ryan Kelly.

McConnell, they report, has "returned to the earmarking game with gusto" by going after "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," according to Cohn and Kelly. "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."

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Cohn and Kelly note that McConnell's "conference is still predominantly opposed to earmarking," the Senate minority leader has said he's committed to "ensuring Kentucky always punches above its weight" in terms of funding.

The Roll Call journalists note, "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 decade-long absence…. 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."

According to Cohn and Kelly, 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 reporters observe. "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."

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Read Roll Call's full article at this link.