Four GOP senators voted for a provision on Friday that would have ripped away millions of dollars in federal funding that they had worked to secure for their home states.
The vote came as lawmakers worked to pass a bill to fund large swaths of the federal government just hours before it was set to shut down. The bill has already passed the House and is set to be signed by President Joe Biden before the end of the night on Friday.
Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida led a last-ditch effort to strip all congressionally directed spending (CDS) out of the roughly $460 billion package. Known colloquially as “earmarks,” the CDS process allows lawmakers to request federal funding for individual projects in their home states.
Like most Senate Republicans, Scott did not participate in that process, describing earmarks as a “corrupt practice” ahead of a vote on his amendment to strip all earmarks out of the bill.
Altogether, 17 GOP senators requested and secured earmark funding.
But 4 of those 17 Republicans voted for Scott’s amendment, which ultimately failed on a 64-32 vote, including:
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Deb Fischer of Nebraska
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John Thune of South Dakota
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Thom Tillis of North Carolina
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Tommy Tuberville of Alabama
Fischer, Thune, and Tillis all later voted for the final passage of the bill after the amendment failed, but Tuberville voted against the entire package.
Spokespeople for those four senators did not immediately return a request for comment explaining their votes.
Thune’s vote may be explained by the fact that he’s now running for Senate GOP leader, and the Republican conference has internal rules — though nonbinding — against requesting earmarks.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who secured earmark funding, also voted against the bill, protesting its inclusion of a controversial new gun provision.
I have some bad news – buried in the appropriations bill being voted on this week is a terrible new gun policy rider that significantly rolls back the firearms background check system.
1/ You need to know about this – it’s bad enough that I will vote against the entire bill.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 6, 2024
Friday’s vote was the latest example of a phenomenon famously dubbed “vote no, take the dough” by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
It refers to the practice of lawmakers voting against bills that contain funding that will benefit their districts or states, only to celebrate it later.
Forty House Republicans did the same thing on Wednesday, voting against the government funding bill despite the fact it secured millions in earmarks funding for their districts.
Tuberville’s vote against the entire package came despite his office securing tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for an array of projects across his home state.
That included more than $20 million that he secured with fellow Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama to repair a lock on the Chattahoochee River, more than $5 million for a vehicle maintenance storage facility at a US Army post in southern Alabama, $1.6 million for a new water well in Ashford, and several other projects.
But voting against bills containing earmarks is just one way to “vote no” and “take the dough.”
In recent years, lawmakers who voted against the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including Tuberville, have nonetheless celebrated the downstream effects that the federal funding has for their states.
In June, Tuberville celebrated the arrival of $1.4 billion in federal funding to expand access to the internet in Alabama, even though it came from the infrastructure bill.
A spokesman for Tuberville told Business Insider last year that the senator believed “the people of Alabama deserve their fair share” of the funding now that the legislation had become law.
In some instances, “voting no and taking the dough” has backfired on lawmakers, such as when Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida was confronted by a local reporter for touting funding that she had actually voted against.
