Labor-HHS-Education earmarks are back in House, with limits
Source: Roll Call
Posted February 25, 2026 at 12:56pm, Updated at 4:09pm
House GOP appropriators are allowing earmarks back into their chamber’s Labor-HHS-Education bill after barring them for the past three years, according to guidance that House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., released Wednesday for the upcoming fiscal 2027 cycle.
Unlike the Senate’s version, however, Cole’s guidance opens up only the bill’s Health Resources and Services Administration account for “community project funding,” which is largely used to provide funding to hospitals. And the House has put significantly more restrictions on eligibility within that account, largely limiting the earmarks to just rural clinics and hospitals and Federally Qualified Health Centers, according to subcommittee guidance released Wednesday.
House Republicans had barred earmarks from the Labor-HHS-Education measure after they took back control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections. But the Senate has maintained the bill’s earmark eligibility, and the fiscal 2026 Labor-HHS-Education law includes just under $1.4 billion within those accounts, all from the Senate.
The Health Resources and Services Administration is the largest of the seven accounts eligible in the Senate, and that chamber included $844.5 million in HRSA earmarks for the current fiscal year.
Read more: https://rollcall.com/2026/02/25/labor-hhs-education-earmarks-are-back-in-house-with-limits/
This is how they bribe GOPers who will then attack Democrats for "waste" when we try to apply our tax money for helping people, while they "feed at the trough" for their constituents.
The GOP voted to slash and burn much of the stuff that was part of past HHS projects/grants and sat silent as their dear leader delayed, unilaterally reprogrammed, and illegally impounded those things that had been previously designated BY Congress for various communities nationwide.