Republicans offered few concessions in this week’s deal to end the government shutdown, and the agreement came with a cherry on top: nearly $1.4 billion earmarked for projects in GOP members’ districts.
The measure President Donald Trump signed included three full-year funding bills, along with a short-term stopgap for the rest of the government. The parameters of the deal were “exactly like we asked Democrats to send us all along,” Trump said Wednesday.
Two of those bills — the Agriculture-FDA and Military Construction-VA appropriations bills — were stocked with $2.4 billion in earmarks, most of which went to Republicans.
The ...