We elected President Trump and a Republican Congress to cut government spending. The Department of Government Efficiency showed us much of the wasteful spending. Congress just passed a bunch of spending bills loaded with earmarks. Is Congress listening to the people who elected them?

On Monday, Open The Books reported:

Most universities dream of wealthy alumni who will send massive donations to their alma maters. The kind who contribute millions of dollars year after year, funding libraries, laboratories and more.

A select few universities have found such a wealthy, if unwitting, donor for 2026: the U.S. taxpayer, by way of pork-hungry senators.

Twenty-four senators requested $636 million of earmarks for the universities they attended as students. That’s more than 20% of the $3.7 billion of earmarks requested for universities in the 2026 federal budget, according to Open the Books’ review of congressional disclosures.

The list includes 13 Democrats and 11 Republicans. However, it was Republicans who requested $470 million (74%) of the cash.

The average alma mater earmark request is worth $4.9 million this year. Earmark requests for universities that are not affiliated with a senator were worth only $3 million on average.

This is a partial list:

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville
7 earmark requests worth $164.9 million

Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV)
Marshall University
9 earmark requests worth $57.5 million

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
Washington State University
2 earmark requests worth $50.9 million

Sen. John Boozman (R-AR)
University of Arkansas-Fayetteville
2 earmark requests worth $4.3 million

The article concludes:

The government will shut down on Jan. 31 if Congress cannot agree on a 2026 federal budget. Unfortunately for taxpayers, alma mater earmarks appear to be one of the few items that lawmakers from both parties support.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) introduced an amendment on Jan. 22 to strike all earmarks from the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill, calling them “partisan pet projects” that are “outside the core mission” of the bill.

He was unsuccessful. Seventy-six House Republicans joined 215 Democrats in voting to keep the earmarks intact. Another eight Republicans and one Democrat abstained. The results were unsurprising, given that 31 House members secured $131 million for their own alma maters last year.

Each one gets an “F” for fiscal sanity.

This is unacceptable.

This is the link to download the full list of donations to alma maters.