Rep. Young Kim is pushing a resolution to stop members of Congress from steering taxpayer-funded earmarks to projects that quietly enrich their own families, a loophole she says has survived every reform effort so far.
Kim, a California Republican, introduced the Stop Congressional Self-Enrichment Resolution after the House moved in July to restrict lawmakers' stock trading. That earlier effort, driven by GOP leadership, imposed new limits on stock purchases and required several days' notice before sales. But Kim argues the stock-trading crackdown left a second avenue for self-enrichment wide open: earmarks that indirectly pad a lawmaker's bank account through family connections or nearby property values.
Current House rules require any member requesting an earmark, formally called a "community project funding request", to certify that neither the member nor the member's spouse has a financial interest in the recipient. Kim's resolution would extend that certification to cover immediate family members and all indirect financial interests, including the kind of property-value boost that comes when federal dollars build a park, a road, or a community center next to land a lawmaker's family owns.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Kim laid out exactly how the loophole works. She described two scenarios that current rules do nothing to prevent:
"It could be earmarking a nonprofit organization where a member's spouse sits on the board of directors or board of trustees, so it will indirectly benefit the family. Or it could earmark for a park at, let's say, an apartment building that a member or member's spouse or member's children owns."
She went further, describing how federal construction projects, a new road, a community center, can inflate the value of a lawmaker's nearby real estate holdings without the member ever appearing on the recipient's paperwork.
"And with the federal funds that the member brings and build the park nearby or community center nearby, it could increase the property value and therefore indirectly benefiting the member and their family members. Maybe asking to build a road up to rural land the member owns."
None of that triggers a violation under current House rules. The certification requirement covers only the member and the member's spouse, and only direct financial interests in the earmark recipient itself. A son, a daughter, or a piece of property across the street falls outside the rule entirely.
Kim's push did not arrive in a vacuum. The history of earmark self-dealing runs through both parties and spans years of controversy that Congress has never fully addressed.
In 2006, then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican from Illinois, faced scrutiny over a $207 million earmark to build a parkway near property he owned. A good-government group flagged the arrangement. Hastert's attorney pushed back hard, calling the allegation "libelous" and comparing the criticism to "complaining about a purchase in Alexandria based on renovations at the Capitol."
The early 2000s also produced the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska's Inside Passage, a project that became a national symbol of earmark waste and helped trigger a decade-long moratorium on the practice altogether. Congress eventually lifted that moratorium and restored earmarks with new safeguards, but Kim's resolution argues those guardrails still leave too much room for members to profit.
More recent cases involve Democrats. In 2023, the Boston Globe reported that Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, secured earmarks benefiting a health center where his wife worked. Two million dollars went to the South Boston Community Health Center, her employer. Another $1 million went to a foundation where Lynch's wife served as an unpaid director. Fox News Digital reached out to Lynch for comment but did not report receiving a response.
Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, previously secured $3.5 million in earmarks for George Mason University. His wife, Anne Holton, a former Virginia education secretary, had served as the university's interim president and later held a position as a professor there.
A Kaine spokesperson told the Messenger that the earmarks "are in no way influenced by Secretary Holton." The spokesperson added that Holton had "no involvement in the CDS process, and no involvement in the George Mason CDS requests," and that "Senator Kaine and Secretary Holton have not discussed the requests."
Whether or not those denials are accurate, the arrangement illustrates exactly the gap Kim wants to close. Under current rules, a senator can direct millions in taxpayer money to an institution that employs his wife, and as long as the wife is not the named recipient of the earmark, no certification is triggered. The rules treat the transaction as clean on paper even when the financial benefit to the family is obvious.
Kim was careful to distinguish her resolution from an attack on earmarks themselves. She pointed to her own work securing wildfire prevention and recovery funding for her Orange County district as the kind of constituent service earmarks are meant to support.
"This is not in any way discouraging members to fight for their districts and bring in the appropriate taxpayer dollars for projects near their districts."
But she drew a sharp line at members who use the process to line their own pockets.
"That's what we are sent to do, fight for our district, but not at the expense of, you know, enriching. I mean, not at the expense of hurting our very constituents that we are trying to support while we are lining our pockets, because there are too many career politicians in Washington looking out for no one but themselves."
Kim framed the timing as a natural follow-up to the stock-trading restrictions. She noted that Americans have grown so fed up with congressional self-dealing that apps tracking lawmakers' stock trades, like the "Pelosi Stock Tracker", have become popular tools for ordinary investors trying to follow the money. Earmarks, she argued, represent the next front in the same fight.
"This is a good time because we see Americans are sick and tired of watching politicians getting filthy rich while average Americans are worrying about making ends meet and stretch every dollar that they earn."
The House's July action on stock trading marked the first successful restriction on lawmakers' personal financial activity in years. The Senate has yet to take up its own version of those prohibitions, though it quietly banned lawmakers from betting on prediction markets in a separate move. Kim's resolution now opens a second front, targeting a form of self-enrichment that does not show up in brokerage disclosures or trading apps.
Several questions remain unanswered. The resolution's exact text and bill number have not been made public. It is unclear whether the measure would apply only to the House or extend to the Senate, where Kaine's earmark history would fall under its scope. And the resolution's prospects in a Congress that only recently restored earmarks after a decade-long ban remain uncertain.
Kim signaled she views the fight as winnable precisely because the public mood has shifted.
"The days of members thinking that 'I can use the community project funding request or bringing the earmarks for my district and get filthy rich off of it', those days are numbered."
Congress banned insider stock trading and called it reform. If lawmakers can still steer millions in taxpayer money to institutions that employ their families and inflate the value of their own property, the reform has a hole big enough to drive a parkway through.
