Appropriations Chair Murray Steers More Than $425 Million Home to Her Small State, Which Her Party Calls Fiscal Responsibility
The haul includes major upgrades to a naval shipyard; conservatives who decry pork elsewhere have located an exception in the chair's district
Ink = the flip (fiction). Red = real Republican · Blue = real Democrat.
WASHINGTON — Murray, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, has loaded her panel's spending bills with more than $425 million in earmarks and directed spending for her small home state, a haul that includes major upgrades to a naval shipyard and lands, per capita, among the most generous self-directed appropriations in the chamber.
The figure is remarkable chiefly for the company it keeps: it arrives at a moment when the senator's own party is attacking the other side for exploding deficits and warning that earmarks are a return to the bad old days of pork-barrel spending. Both propositions are held simultaneously — that federal spending is a reckless danger to the Republic, and that hundreds of millions for one state is prudent stewardship — a feat of balance The Press's budget desk attributes to the chair's proximity to the pen.
The senator's office describes the funding as essential investment in critical infrastructure, national security, and jobs, three phrases that attach themselves to any appropriation the moment it lands in one's own state and detach the instant it lands in someone else's, where the identical dollars become waste, a handout, and a symptom of Washington's addiction to spending.
The Press's arithmetic desk notes that the shipyard, the roads, and the water projects are real and useful, and that this is precisely the point: the earmark is not defended as frivolous but as necessary, by the same members who call the next state's necessities frivolous. The map does not lie; the money went to one place and the outrage went to another.
Reaction followed the standing choreography. Supporters saw a powerful chair delivering for the people who elected her; opponents saw a deficit hawk with a nine-figure blind spot shaped exactly like her state. The Press archives confirm both parties own the vocabulary — 'bringing home results' and 'swamp spending' — and swap it, line item by line item, whenever the other side is the one holding the gavel.
The rest of the national map, contacted for comment, said it was still waiting for the funnel to swing its way.
📜 The Receipts
What actually happened: As Senate Appropriations Committee chair, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) secured more than $425 million in congressionally directed spending (earmarks) for Maine in the FY2026 funding bills — an outsized per-capita share for a small state, including major funding priorities such as the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard — as she gears up for a tough 2026 re-election, even as Republicans attack Democrats over federal deficits.