Presidential Influence and Competitive Grant Funding: Reexamining Presidential Pork

How does partisan alignment with the president affect the distribution of federal competitive grant funding? This analysis contributes to the literature on distributive politics by reexamining the relationship between alignment with the president and competitive grant funding over the time period of 2001 to 2017. Furthermore, the analysis will test if the relationship between alignment and competitive grant funding changed after the enactment of the 2011 earmark moratorium. Fractional probit regression is used to model the relationship between a representative’s partisan alignment with the president and the portion of annual competitive grant funding that their district receives. The results suggest that there is no relationship between alignment and competitive grant funding when looking at grant funding across all federal agencies. However, when only examining agencies that are susceptible to presidential influence a weak relationship emerges. Findings also suggest that this relationship developed after the enactment of the earmark moratorium