The reason there were such problems in this area until recently was congressional earmarks. When people lobbied for their representatives to support their pet

The reason there were such problems in this area until recently was congressional earmarks. When people lobbied for their representatives to support their pet cause, traditionally the best way they had to do this was to issue an earmark as part of some bill. Earmarks are not heavily fought by other representative because they do not give federal money to a state, rather they are the federal government forcing a state to spend some of their own money on something they wouldn't otherwise have done. The problem with this is that unless the local government decides to overbudget for this and run a surplus every year, this money comes from somewhere. Typically something boring that people don't care about, like infrastructure maintenance. That is, people don't care about it until it starts to actually fail... Then congressional earmarks got banned. Only, things are actually worse now, because it turns out the political horse trading around earmarks was the only reason representatives have to compromise across party lines, instead of always holding a hard line on the issues their supporters want. This is the direct cause of the current political gridlock.