In the News

U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright has assumed leadership of a House Appropriations subcommittee, a promotion that he thinks means more federal dollars for Northeast Pennsylvania.

In his fifth term as a congressman, Cartwright has worked his way up to chairman of the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies subcommittee. The subcommittee oversaw the allocation of about $71 billion in federal spending in the fiscal year 2021 budget. As chairman, Cartwright said, he drafts the subcommittee’s spending bill, known as “the chairman’s mark.”

“Getting money to northeastern Pennsylvania is the whole point of all of this,” Cartwright, D-8, Moosic, said. “It’s why I ran for Congress.”

Cartwright moved up to the chairmanship because the previous Democratic congressman who had the post, Jose Serrano of New York, retired. The subcommittee oversees the Departments of Justice and Commerce, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Civil Rights Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the International Trade Commission, the Legal Services Corporation, the Marine Mammal Commission, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the State Justice Institute. The Appropriations Committee, which oversees all federal spending, has 12 subcommittees.

Cartwright could not point to specific local projects he envisions will receive federal money because of his position, but said he expects to hear from many and plans to have staff on the lookout for targets.

“You’ve heard me say it before, our area’s economy has been struggling for decades. Anybody who actually has lived here knows that we don’t have enough money circulating in our economy,” he said. “If you don’t have an effective congressman in your district, your tax money is still being spent. But it’s going to northern Alabama, it’s going into New Jersey, it’s going to California, it’s going in other places. So Washington’s a tough place. Nobody holds the door open for you, you have to scrap for everything.”

Cartwright said his power to bring home money could expand if Congress revives a form of earmarks. Earmarks were spending bill language inserted, often secretly, by members of Congress for special projects in their home districts. Congress did away with them a decade ago because of abuses like the infamous “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska and illegal influence peddling by lobbyists.

Cartwright, a member of the House Democratic leadership team, expects Democrats to try to revive earmarks in the next two years, but limit their allocation to governments and nonprofit groups and bar money from going to private companies. Congress members will have to publicly defend their requests, he said.

“I’m sure we’re gonna have a very, very robust attempt to have it happen,” he said. “What went before was the Wild West. Money could go all sorts of places, including to privately held corporations. And there was little transparency.”

Ed Mitchell worked for three congressmen who earned reputations for “bringing home the bacon,” as earmarks became known — the late Rep. Daniel J. Flood of Wilkes-Barre, former U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Nanticoke, and the late Rep. John Murtha of Johnstown, who served as chairman of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.

Mitchell said Cartwright’s presence on the Appropriations Committee alone makes a difference.

“Just being a chairman of the subcommittee also assists him because there’ll be other people on the committee and in the Congress who will want things that may go through his subcommittee,” Mitchell said. “And, you know, there’ll be bargaining and he’ll bring something to them, and they may bring something to him, or he’ll have a favor he can call in later So, yeah, there’s no better position if you’re in the majority than being chairman of the subcommittee, and especially on an important committee like that one. Ways and Means and Appropriations are just about the two best you could be on.”If earmarks returned, Cartwright’s power to bring home federal money would increase substantially, Mitchell said.