GOP senators decided to enact the permanent ban during a closed-door caucus meeting, with aides saying the issue had been under discussion among Republicans for months.

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Congress first banned earmarks in 2011, after Republicans took back the House in 2010. But that moratorium expired in January, with the start of the 116th Congress, meaning lawmakers could have tried to insert earmarks into fiscal 2020 government funding bills.

Fiscal conservatives, who have blasted earmarks as "pork-barrel spending," praised the decision.

Senate Republicans voted on Thursday to permanently ban the practice of including earmarks — money directed by lawmakers into pet projects — in government funding bills.“Backroom deals, kickbacks, and earmarks feed a culture of constant incumbency and that’s poisonous to healthy self-government," Sasse said in a statement.