Among Republicans, Rooney has led the charge, arguing that Congress needs earmarks in particular to direct money to water infrastructure projects undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers. “Getting rid of them completely was a mistake,” he told me. He acknowledged that constituents back home will initially get on him for his support for earmarks, having heard the much louder campaign against them as a tool of corruption and cronyism. But, Rooney said, “if you give me five minutes to make the case, every head in the room is nodding in agreement.”

If Rooney had his way, Republicans would have brought back a limited form of earmarks a year ago. He pushed for an internal conference vote to allow them under House rules. But when it became clear his proposal might have enough support to pass, and fearful of the potential backlash to a closed-door revival of earmarks, Ryan stepped in and persuaded Republicans to slow down. In exchange for scrapping the vote, the speaker promised to allow hearings on the issue so that if Congress did revive earmarks, it would do so in a transparent, deliberative way.

The other key to Ryan’s strategy, however, is bipartisanship. Republicans know that if they bring back earmarks unilaterally, they’re opening themselves up to attack from both the right and left. So they’re trying to entice Democrats to join them. “If they’re not part of it, then to me it’s a futile exercise,” Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, vice chairman of the Rules Committee, told me. As part of its hearings, the panel will devote a full day to testimony from members in both parties, and on either side of the issue. “This is not a stacked deck. This is a real hearing,” Cole said.

Republicans are off to a promising start with Democrats. “It worked!” Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat, told reporters after the Trump meeting, in reference to the earmarks system. Durbin’s counterpart in the House leadership, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, told reporters the next day that he planned to testify in support of earmarks before the Rules Committee. “We are a co-equal branch of government,” he said. “And to go hat-in-hand to the administration and say, my district needs a bridge, or I have a school in my district that needs assistance, or I have a channel that needs to be dredged, and go to the administration hat-in-hand, that undermines what the Constitution provides and the relationship of equality between the legislative and executive branches of government.”

Republicans have floated a range of ideas to prevent a repeat of the abuses of the past. They likely would begin by continuing reforms Democrats adopted requiring lawmakers to publicly identify the earmarks they request and prohibit earmarks from being airdropped into conference committee reports that can’t be amended by the House or Senate. Another possibility is barring earmarks from going to private entities, or requiring that local governments receiving them put up matching funds. “I would see it as a more limited, more focused, and more restricted process than we had before the initial earmark ban,” Cole said.