What Earmarks and “Pork” Really Are
Earmarks are specific spending items inserted into legislation to fund particular projects—often in a member of Congress’s district. A road expansion, a university research grant, or a flood control system are typical examples. In recent years, they’ve been rebranded as “community project funding,” but the concept remains the same. They are visible, tangible, and easy for voters to understand because they show up in specific places.
“Pork” is the broader category. It includes earmarks but also refers more generally to spending that appears politically motivated—projects designed to win favor with voters rather than serve a clear national priority. The term is often used loosely, sometimes capturing legitimate spending that critics simply disagree with, but the core idea is the same: money directed in ways that feel more political than necessary.
These categories attract attention because they are concrete. You can point to a project and ask whether it should exist. That makes them powerful in public debate, even if they are not central to the fiscal problem.
Earmarks First – The Actual Numbers
The scale is what matters most, and this is where the gap between perception and reality becomes clear. Recent earmark totals have been roughly $10 to $16 billion per year. Against a federal budget of approximately $6.5 to $7 trillion, that is a very small share. Against an annual deficit in the range of $1.5 to $2 trillion, it represents a tiny percentage share. Even if every earmark were eliminated, the impact on the deficit would be modest. You would be reducing borrowing by less than one percent, leaving the vast majority of the gap untouched. The government would still be adding well over a trillion dollars to the debt each year.
Earmarks feel large because they are visible and specific, and maddening when discovered by the public. In the context of the overall budget, they are not.
Pork Is Bigger—but Still Not the Answer
When people broaden the discussion to include “pork” more generally, they often assume the numbers become much larger. It is true that beyond formal earmarks, there is spending that can reasonably be described as inefficient, duplicative, or politically driven. Some subsidies, overlapping programs, and region-specific investments fall into this category. However, even generous attempts to quantify this type of spending still tend to produce totals in the tens of billions rather than the trillions. This math is critical to our understanding of the deficit overall. Analysts at the Congressional Budget Office consistently show that long-term spending growth is driven by major programs, not discretionary add-ons. Similarly, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has emphasized that even aggressive efforts to eliminate waste would only modestly reduce projected deficits.
There is room for improvement, and there are real savings to be found. But the scale of those savings does not match the scale of the problem.
Why This Debate Persists
The focus on earmarks and pork persists because they are easy to understand and easy to communicate. A multi-million-dollar project in a specific district is something people can grasp immediately. By contrast, the forces driving trillion-dollar deficits—demographics, healthcare cost growth, and compounding interest—are more abstract and harder to explain. There is also a political incentive to emphasize these categories. It is far easier to campaign against “waste” than to propose changes to major entitlement programs or broad-based taxes. Calling out pork allows politicians to signal fiscal responsibility without engaging with the most difficult trade-offs.
At the same time, the criticism is not misplaced. These types of spending can reflect poor prioritization and can erode trust in government. But they are not the primary drivers of the fiscal imbalance.
Eliminating Them Doesn’t Guarantee Savings
Another important point is that eliminating earmarks does not automatically reduce total spending. When earmarks were effectively banned between 2011 and 2021, overall federal spending did not decline in a meaningful way. Instead, funds were allocated through other mechanisms, often by federal agencies rather than directly by Congress. One way or another, our elected officials and appointees find a way to spend.
This shift can change who makes decisions, but it does not necessarily change how much is spent. In some cases, it may even reduce transparency, since earmarks at least identify the elected official responsible for requesting a project. Without them, decisions can become more opaque.
As a result, removing earmarks is more likely to redirect spending than to eliminate it entirely.
Where the Real Money Is
To understand why earmarks and pork only scratch the surface, it is necessary to look at the largest components of the federal budget. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and interest on the debt account for the vast majority of spending and nearly all of its long-term growth. Healthcare costs have consistently grown faster than the overall economy, placing increasing pressure on the budget. Social Security faces demographic challenges as the population ages and the ratio of workers to retirees declines. Interest costs are rising as the total debt increases and borrowing becomes more expensive. Defense remains a large and persistent commitment.
These categories operate on a completely different scale. Changes here involve hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars over time. That is where the trajectory of the deficit is determined.
The Risk of Focusing on the Wrong Problem
Focusing too heavily on earmarks and pork creates a misleading sense of progress. It suggests that the deficit can be addressed through relatively painless cuts to waste and inefficiency. While those efforts are worthwhile, they do not come close to closing the gap. This can delay more substantive action. If policymakers and the public believe that the problem can be solved at the margins, there is less urgency to confront the larger structural issues. Over time, that delay makes the eventual adjustments more difficult. Addressing waste should be part of a broader effort to improve fiscal discipline. It should not be mistaken for a comprehensive solution.
The Bottom Line
Eliminating earmarks and reducing pork can improve the quality of spending and help rebuild trust in how decisions are made. Those are meaningful goals, and they are worth pursuing. But in terms of the deficit, the impact is limited. At most, these changes would produce savings measured in tens of billions of dollars, while the underlying problem is measured in trillions.
The numbers leave little room for interpretation. If the objective is to materially change the country’s fiscal trajectory, the focus has to shift to the largest and fastest-growing parts of the budget. That is where the real choices and the real solutions lie.