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Vulnerable House Republicans voted to advance a far-right spending package that would eliminate Community Project Funding for the very communities they were elected to represent.
According to new reporting from Business Insider, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle had secured more than $15 billion in Community Project Funding for fiscal year 2025 – only for House Republicans, including their most vulnerable members, to scrap the funding.
“Those communities will have to make do without that funding, at least for now,” Business Insider explains. “And in an ironic twist, it’s the GOP’s more vulnerable members who stand to lose the most politically.”
Community projects that have since lost funding were set to fund new police vehicle fleets, updates to fire departments, bridge construction, and more.
DCCC Spokesperson Justin Chermol:
“Vulnerable House Republicans proved they don’t work for the communities they were elected to represent – they work for Elon Musk and JD Vance, who urged the so-called moderate House Republicans to cancel funding for their local police departments and the construction of new roads and bridges so they could enact massive tax cuts for their billionaire donors. Now, their communities are less safe.”
Business Insider: Lawmakers were set to bring over $15 billion back to their home states. Then Congress passed the GOP’s government funding bill.
By Bryan Metzger | March 26, 2025
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$5 million for sidewalks and traffic signals in Ramapo. $2.25 million for water tank improvements in Pleasantville. $1.25 million for a sewer system in North Salem. These so-called “earmarks,” known officially as “community project funding” or “congressionally directed spending,” are one of the most direct ways that lawmakers can help their constituents. They also happen to make for a good political talking point, and Election Day was just three weeks away.
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That’s because the GOP-written funding bill that Congress passed this month included no funding for earmarks, affecting not just Lawler and his district, but the hundreds of other House members and senators in both parties who had each worked to secure earmarks. All told, it’s a loss of more than $15 billion across thousands of projects.
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With the GOP hoping to defend their majority, it’s now some of the party’s more vulnerable members who are the most politically exposed by the lapse in earmarks. These aren’t the kinds of DOGE-led cuts that Republicans have been cheering on. Lawmakers fought to secure that funding for local governments and organizations in their districts. And in the House, Republicans were set to receive roughly two-thirds of the funding.
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Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke had secured $10 million for a water system in a small town in a remote portion of his Montana district, hoping that the investment would allow the community to build more housing. “Washington, DC doesn’t know where Seely Lake is. I know where Seeley Lake is,” Zinke told BI. “Those types of projects really, really, help a community. That’s who I work for.”
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