Yet in the last six years, party leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers alike have discovered that earmarks were far more significant to the functioning of government than the sum of their cost to taxpayers would indicate. Their elimination furthered the devolution of power from Congress to the executive branch—a source of particular frustration for congressional Republicans who had long railed against the president’s use of executive actions on policies the legislature had declined to approve. And more consequentially, the ban contributed to gridlock in Washington by robbing party leaders of their ability to sweeten legislation for recalcitrant members. Where in the past they could offer earmarks to buy votes, now they were empty-handed. Stymied by constant revolts from Tea Party conservatives, even Boehner acknowledged he had been left with little leverage. With the grease gone, the train got stuck.

A group of Republicans has pushed for the return of earmarks at the beginning of each session of Congress since the ban took effect, but the effort never gained traction in large part because Boehner stood in the way. “As long as I’m speaker, there will be no earmarks,” he said in 2014. When Boehner resigned the next year, his staff created a gauzy, documentary video hailing the ban as central to his legacy and highlighting his record of never seeking an earmark during his quarter-century in the House. “It’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” he said in the video.

Boehner’s exit revived the push to end the ban. House Republicans were set to vote on a proposal to restart the practice last week in an internal party meeting. But Ryan intervened, warning of the potential political fallout of a secret vote to bring back earmarks so soon after Donald Trump won the White House on a “drain the swamp” message. A Republican inside the room said that based on the comments from members, the amendment approving earmarks would likely have passed had the speaker not stepped in. Yet even though Ryan halted the vote, he brings a much more open mind to the issue than did Boehner. In a carefully worded statement to reporters the next day, he acknowledged—without ever uttering the word “earmark”—that the total ban could be lifted sometime in 2017. “Our members are worried that we have seen a dilution of the separation of powers,” Ryan said. “Our members are worried that the executive branch, unelected bureaucrats, have been given far too much power and that we’ve seen violence done to the separation of powers.” He continued:

So restoring the power of the purse truly to the legislative branch, so that elected officials can hold the unelected branch of government more accountable, is the genesis of that concern. We decided yesterday that we’re going to spend a good amount of time deliberating how best to do that. So we’re going to be spending the first quarter of 2017 figuring out just how we can make sure we can restore the power of the purse to the legislative branch to hold the unelected branch accountable. When we say drain the swamp, that means stop giving all this power to unelected people to micromanage our society, our economy, and our lives, and restore the Constitution. That’s what this debate is about.

What Ryan doesn’t mention is that restoring earmarks could make his job easier, and Trump’s, too. The speaker has put an emphasis on returning to “regular order” in the House by passing individual appropriations bills to fund the government rather than packaging them all together in one giant omnibus that conservatives hate. But just like Boehner before him, Ryan has struggled to realize that goal, and one reason is that appropriations bills are exactly the vehicles in which legislative leaders once routinely doled out earmarks as carrots to secure the votes for passage.