House lawmakers under Democratic leadership are embracing earmarks to dump billions into district projects lobbied for by members whose individual requests have been made public on the House Committee on Appropriations website Monday.
The deadline for members to submit requests for “Community Project Funding” was Friday, and will be updated with a handful of new projects over the next two months once the Biden administration releases details of its requested budget. The committee will begin reviewing requests for its 2022 appropriations bills.
Among the winners in the earmark nominations include a proposal from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi herself, requesting $1 million for the “Courage Museum” in San Francisco.
Under the project name, “Educational Curriculum for Ending Violence ‘Courage Museum,'” Pelosi is directing a seven-figure sum to fund the group which smeared Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh with its celebration of Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of decades-old sexual misconduct to derail his 2018 nomination. Ford however, was never able to even prove the two had ever even met around the time of the alleged abuse while they were at Georgetown Prep in the early 1980s.
What's old is new again. They said earmarks would be different this time, but @SpeakerPelosi is up to her same old tricks. $1M in taxpayer dollars for a "Courage Museum" to praise courageous leftists like Christine Blasey Ford https://t.co/uh875vHxWH https://t.co/jcMlx4SGgF pic.twitter.com/xn09ULPls7
— American Accountability Foundation (@ameracctfnd) May 3, 2021
Other requests submitted include California Democrat Rep. Barbara Lee’s plea for $360,000 to fund an LGBT mobile health and gender-affirming care center and Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s pursuit of nearly $300,000 to fund equity education at a local school district.
Republican lawmakers also appear to be taking advantage of earmarks to score special project funding in their own districts, including Kentucky Rep. Hal Rogers requesting nearly $2 million in taxpayer dollars to develop a downtown marketplace in his east district.
