WASHINGTON — For the second year in a row, Alabama’s retiring senator has been rated the “top earmarker.”
Congress agreed Tuesday on a bipartisan framework for a full-year $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill for the remainder of fiscal 2023. The funding package includes more than 7,500 earmarks totaling $16 billion.
According to Bloomberg Government, U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Tuscaloosa) is the “top earmarker” in the FY2023 appropriation bills.
Shelby, the vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, will have 17 projects totaling $656.4 million. This gives Shelby the most earmarked funds for the second year in a row.
The earmarks include $200 million for the Alabama State Port Authority, $100 million for Department of Transportation work on the Woolsey Finnell Bridge over the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa, and $76 million for the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s School of Medicine.
The senator told Bloomberg News he hopes Congress will be able to come to some kind of deal before next year because he won’t be around to renegotiate a new one.
“I’ll be gone. I’ll be cutting the grass and running errands for my wife,” Shelby said. “They’d start all over. I wouldn’t get anything.”
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