WASHINGTON — Call him the billion-dollar man.
Make that $1.2 billion, to be precise, which is the total earmark haul that departing Senate Appropriations ranking member Richard C. Shelby could bring home during the 117th Congress — the last of the Alabama Republican’s congressional career dating back to 1979.
Shelby is clearly going out at the top of the charts for the second year in a row after lawmakers restored the once-reviled practice of parking federal funds in their own constituents’ backyards. He procured a devilishly large $666 million in the fiscal 2023 omnibus package, according to a CQ Roll Call analysis, after roughly $550 million the previous fiscal year.
