Congress Designated $39B in Earmarks. 16% Got Spent.
Summary
Since 2022, Congress has designated $39 billion for more than 20,000 earmarked projects -- schools, waterways, presidential libraries, health clinics -- under the newly transparent Community Project Funding and Congressionally Directed Spending process. The Government Accountability Office's latest tracking report finds that by the end of fiscal year 2024, agencies had paid out only an estimated 16 percent of that money, $6.3 billion, even though 61 percent was technically obligated. Another $17.6 billion sits obligated but unpaid, and $15 billion hasn't been committed to anything at all. Sixteen of the 19 agencies that administer the money report challenges -- staffing cuts among them -- that hurt their ability to oversee it.
Obligated is not spent
's own glossary spells out the distinction the headline number depends on: an obligation is 'a definite commitment that creates a legal liability... payment may be made immediately or in the future,' while an outlay 'occurs, for example, upon the issuance of checks, disbursement of cash, or electronic transfer of funds.' A contract signed is an obligation. A contractor actually paid is an outlay. Applying that distinction to the full $39 billion, 's estimate splits three ways: $6.3 billion obligated and outlayed (16%), $17.6 billion obligated but not yet outlayed (45%) -- money legally committed with no check sent -- and $15 billion not obligated at all (39%). Eighty-four cents of every designated dollar, in other words, has not yet reached anyone.
View data as table
| Obligated and outlayed | 16% | $6.3 billion -- actually paid out |
|---|---|---|
| Obligated, not outlayed | 45% | $17.6 billion -- committed on paper, not yet paid |
| Unobligated | 39% | $15 billion -- not yet committed to anything |
The clock is real: funds expire in 5 years
This isn't money sitting safely in reserve. Congress sets a period of availability for each year's earmarks -- most FY2024 funds get 1 to 5 years to be obligated, though 35% carry no fixed deadline. Once that window closes, unobligated funds simply can't be newly committed; obligated-but-unpaid funds stay usable for 5 more years to settle existing commitments, then whatever's left is cancelled and returned to the Treasury's general fund -- never reaching the community it was named for. Congress designated no new CPF/CDS funds at all for FY2025, so the $39 billion pipeline is tracking is, for now, the whole program: about 1% of projects, representing an estimated $408 million, aren't moving forward at all, because recipients declined the money, couldn't meet agency requirements, or never filed the paperwork -- five recipients in 's sample turned their grants down outright.
The agencies watching the money are stretched thin
Nineteen federal agencies administer CPF/CDS funds, and found 16 of them reported challenges affecting their ability to conduct oversight -- reviewing spend plans, running site visits, checking project time frames. Eight of 19 specifically cited federal staffing reductions: Department of Energy officials told that a wave of staff resignations over the past year left remaining employees with heavier workloads, so the agency has leaned more on written correspondence with recipients in place of meetings. Four of 19 said funding constraints have limited oversight activity like in-person site visits, pushing agencies toward virtual visits instead. On the recipient side, the friction runs the other way: 59% of FY2022-2023 recipients reported at least one implementation challenge in the year before 's interviews -- most commonly managing project time frames (28%), wrestling with agency-specific online payment systems (23%), and staff turnover inside their own organizations (20%).
View data as table
| Project time frame | 28% | Managing deadlines for completing the project |
|---|---|---|
| Agency online systems | 23% | Payment/grant-management portals hard to navigate |
| Recipient staffing | 20% | Staff turnover at the recipient organization itself |
What the money looks like on the ground
's site visits put faces on the percentages. The National Archives and Records Administration's project to modernize the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library's auditorium -- converting it into one large auditorium, a smaller classroom, and making the spaces ADA-compliant -- has had funds obligated and outlayed, but officials say construction hasn't started because costs came in higher than when the project was requested back in 2021; it's still in planning and design. The Army Corps of Engineers' Sabine-Neches Waterway project in Texas, meant to deepen the channel for growing cargo traffic and local industry including LNG facilities, has all its funds obligated and is in the implementation stage, waiting on the dredging-vessel contract to start. A Health Resources and Services Administration-funded health care workforce program at East Los Angeles College's Southeast Campus, by contrast, is complete and already training students.
The common thread 's review found: for the projects that did move forward, purpose stayed remarkably faithful to what Congress designated -- an estimated 98-100% of FY2022-2023 projects had a use consistent with their appropriations-act description. The bottleneck isn't fraud or drift. It's throughput.
This report is 's descriptive, statutorily mandated tracking of CPF/CDS implementation -- built from a generalizable sample of 790 of the 20,294 designated projects, interviews with 167 recipients, 36 site visits, and document review on 30 projects, all reported with 95% confidence intervals (the 16% outlay estimate, for instance, has a range of 12-21%). It is not a compliance or fraud audit: all 19 agencies told they'd found no instances of improper payments or mismanaged CPF/CDS funds, and issued no recommendations in this report, unlike its typical audit work. The figures here are 's own point estimates from that report, not an independent recalculation of underlying agency accounting.
- Congress has designated $39 billion since 2022 for more than 20,000 CPF/CDS earmarked projects across 19 agencies. As of the end of FY2024, estimates only 16% ($6.3 billion) has actually been outlayed, even though 61% is technically obligated.
- $17.6 billion (45%) is obligated but unpaid, and $15 billion (39%) hasn't been committed to anything -- and unobligated funds simply expire once their multi-year availability window closes.
- 16 of 19 administering agencies report oversight challenges; 8 specifically cite federal staffing reductions (Department of Energy: fewer staff, more written correspondence instead of meetings) and 4 cite funding constraints that pushed site visits online.
- About 1% of projects ($408 million) aren't moving forward at all -- five recipients in 's sample declined their earmark outright -- but for projects that did proceed, purpose stayed 98-100% consistent with what Congress designated; this is a slow pipeline, not a diversion of funds.
Sources(1) ▾
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Community Project Funding/Congressionally Directed Spending: Most Fiscal Year 2022-2024 Funds Are Estimated to Be Obligated (GAO-26-107944) (2026-07-16) — 's July 16, 2026 report to the Senate and House Appropriations Committees, the fourth in its statutory 'Tracking the Funds' series (mandated by joint explanatory statements since FY2022). Supplies every dollar figure, percentage, confidence interval, agency count, project example, and methodology detail in this piece: the $39 billion/20,294-project total (Letter, p.1), the obligated/outlayed breakdown with confidence intervals (Highlights and fig. 4, p.9), the not-moving-forward estimate (p.11), the implementation-phase and recipient-challenge breakdowns (figs. 5, 9, 11, pp.10, 16, 20), the agency oversight-activity table and staffing/funding-constraint findings (table 2 and pp.22, 29), the Carter Presidential Library and Sabine-Neches Waterway project examples (figs. 6-7, pp.13), and the period-of-availability/fund-expiration mechanics (p.7-8 and Table 1, p.6). gao.gov · original document
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Since fiscal year 2022, Members of Congress have been able to designate money directly to a specific recipient -- a city, a nonprofit, a university -- for a named project in their district, under new transparency rules that replaced the pre-2011 earmark system. Congress calls the House version Community Project Funding and the Senate version Congressionally Directed Spending; together, GAO's latest tracking report⧉ finds, they add up to $39 billion designated for more than 20,000 projects since 2022. As of the end of fiscal year 2024, estimates agencies had recorded obligations -- legal commitments, like signing a contract or awarding a grant -- for 61% of that money. But obligating money is not the same as spending it: only an estimated 16%, $6.3 billion, had actually been outlayed -- paid out the door.