the.com/earmark
A spending promise so specific it basically has your senator's fingerprints on it.
means To set aside money or resources for one particular, specified purpose — so it can't quietly wander off and be spent on something else.
from Literally a mark on an ear: farmers would notch or clip the ears of livestock to show who owned them or which animal was destined for what. By the 1700s the word had wandered from barnyard to ledger, coming to mean money 'tagged' for a specific purpose — the financial equivalent of a notch in the ear, so no one could pretend it belonged elsewhere.
- origin
- literally notches cut into livestock ears
- congress use
- funds steered to one lawmaker's pet project
- 2011 ban
- officially banned, then quietly revived 2021
- disguise
- now called community project funding instead