WASHINGTON — Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, step aside: there’s a new champion House earmarker, and it’s Kentucky Republican James R. Comer, the powerful Oversight and Accountability panel chair.
Comer’s $241.3 million haul puts him way out front in the rankings of fiscal 2025 appropriations bills either passed by the House or moving through the Appropriations Committee markup process.
The reason is one massive Army Corps of Engineers project included in the Energy-Water bill: $218 million for an addition to the Kentucky Lock about 22 miles from where the Tennessee and Ohio rivers meet. Expanding the lock would allow more and larger barges through, benefiting local communities and the inland waterways industry centered in Paducah, Ky., Comer says.
Comer’s largess dethrones Fleischmann, R-Tenn., the Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee chairman who in fiscal 2024 delivered the most earmark dollars to his constituents among House members, largely by virtue of one similarly sized mega Army Corps project.