A museum in Connecticut was planning to build out its planetarium and observatory. Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee and Texas were set to expand their mentorship programs. A college in Georgia wanted to turn part of its library into a business incubator, and at least two dozen airports across the United States were on track to renovate their terminals and runways.
Those projects and scores of others that had been in line to receive federal funding this year saw that money evaporate this week when Republicans rallied around a stopgap government funding extension to avert a shutdown at midnight tonight. The measure, which passed the House on Tuesday and awaits a vote in the Senate, largely keeps government spending at current levels.
That means it doesn’t include earmarks requested by members of Congress for individual projects in their districts and states. Taken together, the projects totaled about $13 billion, according to congressional aides, a drop in the bucket when it comes to federal spending.
Their omission is yet another way in which Congress has given up its power of the purse — in this case, its members’ ability to direct federal money to projects that help their constituents — at the start of President Trump’s second term.
Lawmakers in both parties lamented the demise of the earmarks, which leaves a host of community improvements and programs in the lurch.
“I’m sorry everybody didn’t get their projects,” Representative Tom Cole, the Oklahoma Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee, told his colleagues in the House chamber on Tuesday.
“I think most of those are worthy,” said Mr. Cole, whose district was slated to receive $107.7 million for 15 projects, down from the $144.7 million he had requested. “I support them.”
Congressional Republicans’ decision to push through a spending bill without earmarks comes as they have increasingly yielded their institutional power to the Trump administration.
Earmarks — now known as “community project funding” in the House and “congressionally directed spending” in the Senate — are among the most explicit ways that individual members of Congress can assert their spending power, by directing federal agencies to spend money on specific projects in their states and districts.
Those programs, which cover a broad spectrum, directly benefit voters and offer lawmakers something concrete to cite as evidence that they are getting results for their constituents.
In spending bills passed by House and Senate appropriations committees this year, lawmakers directed money toward community outreach efforts at Boys & Girls Clubs or Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring programs. They steered it toward university research projects, police and emergency response centers, job training programs and community centers. And they asked for federal funds to boost scores of airport, highway and transit projects.
But Republicans in control of Congress did not take up any of those bills and failed to reach a funding agreement with Democrats ahead of the Friday deadline to keep government money flowing. That has left them pushing for a temporary patch that leaves out earmarks — and almost any other change to current spending.
Democratic lawmakers pointed to the lack of earmarks as one of many problems they saw with a spending measure that they largely oppose.
“Those projects are really critical for communities,” said Representative Robert Garcia of California, whose district would have received $13.4 million across 14 projects. Republicans, he said, were being shortsighted by failing to fund them.
“Some Republicans really like these projects,” Mr. Garcia said. “I think it’s a shame that none of them are standing up for their communities, none of them are saying anything about these projects.”
Earmarks have a contentious recent history. For decades, they were tacked onto bills to give lawmakers an incentive to make politically tough votes in exchange for being able to direct federal money back home.
But critics have derided earmarks as frivolous pork or magnets for corruption. A series of scandals in the early 2000s and high-profile projects that were deemed spending boondoggles — like the much-derided “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska and a now-closed teapot museum in western North Carolina — only cemented that perception.
As the anti-spending Tea Party movement swept into Congress, lawmakers put a stop to earmarking in 2011. But they returned 10 years later, with stricter rules and greater transparency, in a bid to cut through partisan gridlock and encourage members of Congress to advance spending legislation.
Earmarks are now capped at 1 percent of overall discretionary spending. Lawmakers must provide a public list of their requests and confirm that neither they nor their immediate family members have any financial interest in any of them.
The projects still have critics. Many fiscally conservative lawmakers proudly abstain from the earmarking process, citing them as evidence of government waste. Others raise concerns about the potential for corruption or the scope of projects covered. Even lawmakers who have requested funding for projects have derided the practice.
Representative Tim Burchett, a Republican who was in line to secure $7.5 million in earmarks for his district in eastern Tennessee, said that he supported their omission as a necessary way to rein in government spending.
“I hope it doesn’t hurt anyone,” said Mr. Burchett, who had asked for funds for a mentoring program, a law-enforcement task force fighting child exploitation and projects at universities. “But we’re at $36 trillion in debt, and we’re going to have to tighten our belt.”
Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican who stood to win $10 million to help upgrade walkways at Omaha’s airport, conceded that some of his constituents were likely to be disappointed. But he stood by his support of the spending measure.
“I would have preferred to have them,” he said of the earmarks. “But I’d rather not have a shutdown, right?”
Mr. Bacon had secured $45.6 million for projects in his district in House spending bills. But he said he hoped for better luck next year.
“We’re going to resubmit most of these in the next cycle,” he said.
Maya C. Miller, Ilana Marcus and Jeremy Singer-Vine contributed reporting.
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