Rep. John Culberson is one of the Republican representatives who sought an amendment to poke some major holes in the ban on lawmakers earmarking money. | AP Photo Ryan halts GOP push to restore earmarks

Speaker Paul Ryan suddenly halted a proposal to restore congressional earmarks when it looked likely that the House Republican Conference would signal its support for the plan during a closed-door vote Wednesday, according to sources in the room.

The Wisconsin Republican stepped in and urged lawmakers not to decide on the matter at this time, arguing that Donald Trump had just won the presidential election on a pledge to “drain the swamp” of Washington. Ryan said it was improper for lawmakers to reinstitute earmarks in a secret-ballot election, the sources said.


Reps. John Culberson of Texas, Mike Rogers of Alabama, Tom Rooney of Florida and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania had offered an amendment that would poke holes in a 6-year-old ban on lawmakers designating money for pet projects back home. Rooney also floated a narrower idea to allow earmarks for Army Corps of Engineers water projects.

The group for weeks had been pressing their colleagues on the House floor, arguing that their plan would restore “the most powerful check and balance created by the Founders … the power of the purse.” They said banning earmarks only empowered executive bureaucrats to make decisions about where to allocate money — noting that a reinstatement could also help grease the wheels of a long-stalled appropriations process.

“There’s a lot of pent-up frustration that we have voluntarily given our congressional authority to the executive branch, and it’s time to take that back in a responsible way,” Rogers said in a brief interview off the House floor Wednesday, just hours after the group withdrew the amendment. He thinks it will pass on the House floor later this year.

Heading into the meeting, Republican leaders expected the proposal to fail. And conservative groups like Club for Growth and Heritage Action for America, which caught wind of the effort more than a month ago, have been working the phones to ensure it fails, including by reaching out to constituents in its sponsors’ districts.

“It’s been barely a week since voters sent a resounding rejection of Washington insider politics, and yet House Republicans are already on the verge of proving they’re tone deaf,” Club President David McIntosh said in a statement. “Voters believed that Republicans would ‘drain the swamp,’ not redirect it for their own benefit. Any effort to restore this kind of cronyism should be flatly rejected.”

Former Speaker John Boehner of Ohio led the effort to ban earmarks when Republicans took the House in 2010. The practice had ballooned in the 1990s and early 2000s as lawmakers saw a chance to bring home bacon for constituents. Then the problems started. Disgraced Rep. Duke Cunningham of California went to jail for taking $2.4 million worth of bribes for earmarks, for example. Alaska Republican Don Young’s pricey “bridge to nowhere” also put a bad taste in lawmakers’ mouths.

When Rogers pitched restoring earmarks at a conference meeting in late 2014, his proposal was shot down by Boehner.

But the conference has clearly had a change of heart. Supporters argued that there’s a path to reform to make the process more transparent and prevent abuse. As part of their effort, they’ve rebranded the practice as “congressional district spending,” hoping to drop the negative connotation associated with earmarks. Others are less sensitive to image.

“I’m a New York hack; I support earmarks,” Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said Tuesday. “I came out of an organization, I believe in that type of politics, but I’m the wrong guy to ask. I’m not the moral guardian of the conference.”

During Wednesday’s meeting, however, Ryan asked the authors to withdraw the earmark amendments, and in return the speaker pledged to have a “more thorough process to look at this issue and a vote on it by the end of the first quarter next year,” as one source described his pledge.

The House will vote on the matter on the House floor, eventually.

Reinstituting earmarks in public would be an uphill battle for supporters. It’s one thing to back the idea in private, another to do so in public with conservative groups pressuring lawmakers to vote against it.

The matter still appears to be sensitive. Even some former high-profile earmark champions like House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky and Young declined to say what they thought of the earmark proposal as they walked into the closed-door meeting Wednesday.

The Culberson earmark amendment specifically bars lawmakers from increasing spending. The wording states that the rule “guarantees that our hard earned tax dollars can only be targeted to federal, state or local units of government if the proposal does not increase spending.”

Supporters believe over time they will gain more traction. Last time around, more than 60 lawmakers backed the idea — despite Boehner’s clear disapproval. Wednesday’s events make clear they’re making progress.

Kaitlyn Burton contributed to this report.