Republicans want redistricting but are voting against the spending bill.

But when the first part of the appropriations bill reached the full House; Republicans are expected to struggle to muster the votes to pass the bill in the coming days. Even if it includes almost all of their characteristics. On Thursday, just 113 Republicans, or about 54% of their caucus, voted in favor of a stopgap bill to avert a partial government shutdown, while all but two Democrats supported the bill. .

Notably, it will have to be Democrats who release large amounts of federal funding to Republican House districts. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is expected to receive just over one-third of the votes needed to pass a comprehensive bill that would provide year-round funding to government agencies.

How each House member voted to extend the government shutdown

It’s the latest in what Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has dubbed a “vote no and get dough” phenomenon among Republicans over the past two years in Congress. This is an example.

Earmark was once considered a gateway to congressional corruption, but after a Justice Department investigation sent several members to prison and dozens more former officials were sentenced to felonies, the Tea Party-led House of Representatives The Republican majority expelled Earmark from funding the bill in 2011.

But the House and Senate’s appropriations committees have been sluggish over the years, leading to two-week shutdowns over the past decade, leading Democrats to decide to reinstate the committees starting in fiscal year 2022, when Democrats held the majority. It was determined.

The idea is to instill a personal dimension to the spending game in rank-and-file legislators, eliminate ethical conflicts, and require local support for what are now officially called “community-funded projects.” was to set up a detailed process.

Initially, applications were limited to no more than 10, and overall funding was capped at 1% of a federal agency’s total budget.

Democrats have almost fully embraced these projects, but House Republicans have been reluctant. Only half of them requested appropriations in 2022, but former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was minority leader at the time and was part of the leadership team that banned them a decade ago. ) rejected these funds.

But after House Republicans gained a majority in late 2022, House Republicans voted by a margin of more than 3-1 to continue the apportionment process as re-established by Democrats.

About two-thirds of House Republicans are ready to collect spending from the Appropriations Committee’s latest effort, according to a CQ Roll Call and Bloomberg Government analysis.

Unlike McCarthy, Johnson has fully embraced the budget, having requested more than $100 million to build military bases in his district over the past three years.

Did this change help Republicans learn the ropes and support the bill as a whole?

“To some extent,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), a veteran member of the Appropriations Committee, told reporters Thursday.

When House Republicans drafted their own partisan funding outline last summer, there were some close votes and they might not have won a majority without the conditions.

“It’s hard to vote against a bill when the committee and staff are doing everything in their power to address the issues they want to address,” Simpson said.

This is a very old way of thinking about parliamentary politics, when it was understood that members were expected to support the entire bill if their districts were earmarked millions of dollars.

But dozens of Republicans will likely thumb their noses at that traditional view in the coming days.

Take Representative Tim Burchett (Tennessee), for example. He voted to remove Mr. McCarthy from the speakership in early October after Mr. McCarthy allowed a stopgap funding bill (with mostly Democratic votes) to pass to avoid a government shutdown. He was one of eight Republicans. He voted against the very brief stopgap bill again on Thursday.

Mr. Burchett warned that Americans would “lose our country” over the national debt, but he still supported projects ranging from $2.5 million for East Tennessee Children’s Hospital to $5.4 million to renovate a concert amphitheater in Knoxville. Approximately 20 budget requests worth more than $50 million have been submitted. $100,000 to enhance genetic testing for state law enforcement agencies.

Members just need to “stand up and protect each and every one of them,” Burchett said. “If we need a hospital, we need a hospital. Do we need roads? We need roads. And that’s the government’s duty.”

Do you feel more invested now in voting for either of the two upcoming funding packages totaling about $1.7 trillion because his projects are included?

“I have no obligation,” Burchett said.

Last summer, Democrats grew frustrated as House Republicans steered such large amounts of earmarked funds in their direction.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, oversaw the reopening more than two years ago. At a time when only half of Republicans were requesting it, this allocation represented a nearly two-to-one ratio for her for the majority.

“The amount was determined based on the number of requests,” DeLauro told reporters Thursday.

But Republicans embraced this division and adopted it as a precedent for their majority party. They captured more than 62 percent of the total harvest, by far the largest harvest, according to a January analysis by The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage.

These Republicans hate federal spending except in their own districts.

Senate Democrats are pushing for nearly $4 billion, while Senate Republicans are expected to get $3 billion. House Democrats would receive more than $2.7 billion.

With about a third of lawmakers rejecting these projects, House Republicans are trying to give away the lion’s share of the bill with far fewer members than Democrats.

That would result in a large influx of money to House Republicans seeking appropriation, according to a CQ roll call analysis.

Of the 100 largest recipients of designated funds in the House, 97 are Republicans.

And House Republicans have been wary of politically vulnerable members. According to CQ Roll Call, 10 of the 16 Republicans representing districts that supported President Biden in 2020 are in the top third of the House of Representatives in terms of vote totals.

House Republicans also limited appropriation requests to seven of 12 annual bills, excluding projects from more liberal-leaning policies, such as bills that fund the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. They also cut the Pentagon’s schedule, bowing to far-right lawmakers who accused Pentagon leaders of being “woke.”

even they Democrats blocked three community projects that had won initial approval because they were funding LGBTQ+ projects.

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pennsylvania), whose request for $1.8 million to build an LGBTQ+ community center in Philadelphia was approved but later blocked, replaced Mr. DeLauro and the Senate Appropriations Chairman. He worked with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). He joined his state’s Democratic senators in seeking $1 million for the project in the Senate bill.

Democrats believe that their vetting process has been working for the past several years and that only political reasons led to these actions.

“The nature of the project and the reviews have been very positive,” DeLauro said.

some staunch conservatives They believe that legislators are better placed than government bureaucrats to learn about the needs of their districts, and even believe that early marking is a constitutionally mandated role for Congress.

One such Republican is Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, another of the eight who voted to expel Mr. McCarthy in early October. He initially requested a massive $141.5 million to build a naval air base in the Florida Panhandle, which would have been one of the largest budgets in the House this year.

An old-fashioned mentality on Capitol Hill may have led to the punishment of Gaetz, who led the effort to initially block McCarthy from becoming speaker in January 2023. Instead, his request was accepted for a reduced amount of $50 million, making him one of the top 15 recipients of the Earmark Fund.

But he regularly votes against bills in the Appropriations Committee, as he did Thursday against a stopgap bill.

Simpson hopes more Republicans will embrace the committee’s efforts, given the many at stake in their districts.

He doubts many Republicans will vote against it in the coming weeks, even if it protects their own interests.

“I don’t know. Let’s see,” he said.