WASHINGTON — As one longtime congressional staffer told us years ago: Sen. Richard C. Shelby “usually gets what he wants.”
Now, as appropriations earmarks have returned after a dozen years’ hiatus, the retiring Alabama senator has delivered once more for his state — with over a half-billion dollars’ worth of “congressionally directed spending” in the $1.5 trillion fiscal 2022 omnibus bill that President Joe Biden signed Tuesday.
Shelby, the top Republican on Senate Appropriations, blew away the rest of the field by securing more than $548 million in home-state projects in this year’s spending bills — not counting $3 million for which he shared credit with Rep. Jerry Carl, R-Ala.
