When 99 Percent of USDA Community Facilities Grants Are Earmarked, What Is Left for Everyone Else?

Of the 746 congressionally directed spending projects in the FY2026 Agriculture appropriations bill, 80 percent of them — by number — land in a single USDA account: Community Facilities. By dollar amount, the account absorbs 71 percent of all Agriculture earmarks. And when you calculate how much of the Community Facilities grant budget remains for USDA to allocate competitively, the answer is striking: roughly one percent.

That is the reality facing rural communities in 2026. The USDA Community Facilities program — designed to fund fire stations, hospitals, clinics, schools, libraries, and public safety buildings in towns with populations under 20,000 — has effectively become a congressional earmark distribution vehicle. The competitive grant program still technically exists. But for practical purposes, the money is spoken for before USDA ever opens an application window. (Granted News)

Understanding how this happened, and what it means for organizations that don't have a senator's office on speed dial, is essential for anyone pursuing rural infrastructure funding in the current environment.

How Earmarks Swallowed the Program

The Community Facilities program has three components: direct loans (up to $1.25 billion in FY2026), guaranteed loans ($650 million), and grants. The loan programs operate through a standard application process — rural communities apply to USDA Rural Development state offices, projects are scored on need and feasibility, and loans are issued at favorable interest rates. Those programs, while reduced from their FY2023 peak of $2.8 billion in direct loans, remain accessible through normal channels.

The grants are a different story entirely.

When Congress reinstated earmarks in FY2021 after a decade-long moratorium, the Community Facilities grant account became an immediate magnet. Members of Congress discovered that requesting $500,000 or $1 million for a fire station, community health center, or childcare facility in their district was among the most politically rewarding uses of the earmark process. The projects are tangible, photogenic, and universally popular. A member can announce a new fire truck for a volunteer department in a town of 3,000 people and receive local media coverage that no floor speech on monetary policy will ever match.

The numbers tell the trajectory. From FY2021 through FY2024, Congress directed $1.013 billion in earmark funding through USDA Agriculture accounts, with Community Facilities consistently receiving the largest share. By FY2025, the pattern had hardened: $659 million in Community Facilities grants were designated as earmarks, against a total grant appropriation that left just $5 million for competitive allocation. The FY2026 numbers are marginally better — $13 million in non-earmarked grant funding — but the structural dynamic is unchanged.

The House Committee on Appropriations calls these "Community Project Funding." The Senate calls them "Congressionally Directed Spending." Rural communities that receive them call them transformational. The ones that don't receive them are increasingly calling them a problem.

What Actually Gets Earmarked

Walk through a list of FY2026 Community Facilities earmarks and you'll find exactly the kinds of projects the program was designed to fund — just allocated through political channels rather than competitive merit review.

Fire stations and emergency services equipment dominate the list, particularly in rural districts where volunteer fire departments operate out of buildings older than their newest members. Community health centers and rural clinics appear frequently, especially in districts with documented health professional shortage areas. Childcare and early learning centers have become increasingly common as rural childcare deserts gained national attention. Libraries, community centers, and town halls round out the portfolio.

The individual project amounts typically range from $250,000 to $3 million — meaningful sums for communities where the annual municipal budget might be $2 million total. For the communities that receive them, these earmarks bypass the months-long competitive application process entirely. A member's office negotiates the inclusion with the Appropriations Committee, and the funding flows directly to the named recipient.

The problem is not that these are bad projects. Most of them are exactly what USDA would fund if the money were allocated competitively. The problem is that the selection mechanism has shifted from need-based scoring to political access.

The Communities Left Behind

Rural America is not a monolith. A town of 8,000 in a swing congressional district with an active member on the Appropriations Committee has a fundamentally different funding experience than a town of 2,000 in a safely partisan district represented by a junior member with no committee leverage.

The earmark process requires communities to actively engage their congressional delegation — identifying a project, documenting its need, working with the member's staff to prepare a request, and doing so on the Appropriations Committee's timeline, which often opens and closes within a window of a few weeks in early spring. Communities with professional grant writers, active municipal staff, or nonprofit partners who understand the congressional process can navigate this effectively. Communities without those resources — often the poorest and most isolated, the ones the Community Facilities program was originally designed to reach — are structurally disadvantaged.

Tribal communities face a particular version of this challenge. Federally recognized tribes are eligible for Community Facilities funding and often have acute infrastructure needs. But the earmark request process runs through congressional offices, and tribal communities' relationships with their state congressional delegations vary enormously. Some tribes have cultivated strong working relationships with their representatives. Others, particularly in states where tribal sovereignty issues create political friction, find the earmark request process alienating or inaccessible.

The irony is sharp: the communities with the greatest infrastructure deficits are often the ones least equipped to compete in an earmark-driven system that rewards political sophistication over documented need.

What Rural Communities Should Do Now

If your community needs a fire station, clinic, childcare center, or other essential facility, the funding landscape in 2026 demands a multi-track strategy that doesn't rely on any single mechanism.

Pursue the earmark track aggressively. The FY2027 earmark request window will likely open in February or March 2027. Start now. Contact your representative's and senators' offices and ask for their Community Project Funding / Congressionally Directed Spending request forms and timelines. Most offices publish guidance on their websites each spring. The request requires a project description, cost estimate, evidence of community support (typically a resolution from your local governing body), and documentation that no federal funds would duplicate the request. If you've never submitted an earmark request, reach out to your USDA Rural Development state office — they can help you frame the project in terms that align with how appropriations staff evaluate requests.

Apply for the competitive grant program anyway. Yes, $13 million is a sliver. But it's not zero, and USDA is required to allocate it. The competitive program prioritizes communities with populations under 5,500 and median household incomes below the state nonmetropolitan median. If your community meets those criteria, you're competing in a small pool. The application requires an environmental review and architectural plans, so start the preliminary engineering work now if you haven't already.

Stack with the loan programs. The $1.25 billion in direct loans and $650 million in guaranteed loans are not earmarked. They're available through USDA Rural Development's standard application process, with interest rates significantly below commercial lending. For projects that can support debt service — a clinic generating patient revenue, a childcare center charging tuition — combining a small competitive grant with a direct loan can fund the entire project without waiting for an earmark.

Look beyond USDA. Community Facilities is far from the only federal funding source for rural infrastructure. The Economic Development Administration's Public Works program funds infrastructure in economically distressed communities. FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program funds fire stations and emergency facilities in disaster-prone areas. The Appalachian Regional Commission and Delta Regional Authority fund facilities in their designated geographies. HHS Community Health Center grants fund clinic construction and renovation. Each has its own application process and timeline, but none is as earmark-dominated as USDA Community Facilities.

Engage your state. Multiple states have established their own community facilities programs, often funded through state bond proceeds or dedicated tax revenue. These programs typically have less competition than their federal counterparts and may offer faster timelines. Your state's department of rural development, commerce, or community affairs is the starting point.

The Bigger Question About Earmarks and Rural Equity

The return of earmarks was broadly welcomed in Congress — by both parties — as a way to restore legislative power over spending decisions and give individual members tangible accomplishments to show their constituents. For many rural communities, earmarks have delivered real infrastructure that competitive grant cycles might never have funded. A $750,000 earmark for a volunteer fire station in a town of 1,500 people is money well spent by any reasonable measure.

But when earmarks consume 99 percent of a program's grant budget, the program ceases to function as a competitive, need-based funding mechanism. It becomes something else: a congressional favor bank with USDA's name on it. The communities that benefit are not necessarily the ones with the greatest need. They're the ones with the most effective political relationships.

Whether that tradeoff is acceptable is a policy question that extends beyond any single appropriations cycle. What's not debatable is the practical implication: if your community needs a facility and doesn't have an earmark, you need to be looking everywhere else simultaneously.

For rural communities navigating the full landscape of federal infrastructure funding — from USDA to EDA to FEMA to state programs — Granted can help you identify every program your project qualifies for and build a stacking strategy that doesn't depend on a single congressional phone call.