Earmark reform will be high on the agenda when Congress returns next week, and it’s about time. Public outrage over wasteful spending, epitomized by porkbarrel earmarks, has been raging for months, but reform has been stalled along with a larger lobbying reform package. If a lobbying reform conference report fails to emerge, House Majority Leader John Boehner has promised to move earmark reform as standalone legislation.

An earmark is a provision that directs taxpayer funds to a specific spending program, almost certainly an unworthy one. Often, the author of an earmark is not visible to the public once the legislation has passed. If the project is worthy, putting it in an earmark would be unnecessary — the relevant federal or state agency would use its appropriated funds for the project, through its normal process. Earmarks often fund projects irrelevant to the bill.

The earmarks issue has become emblematic of the spending problem in Washington. The Republican Party which came to power opposing the insider-game of special interest politics and parochial pork barrel spending has already become worse in just 12 years than the Democrats were after 40. Call it GOP efficiency.

An analysis by the Congressional Research Service released in January showed that earmarks in annual appropriations bill stood at 4,155 in 1994,and did fall to 3,055 in 1996, to the credit of the Republican revolutionaries. But then a dramatic reversal began, with earmarks increasing annually and reaching 14,211 in 2004.

Those are just the annual appropriations bills. Public outrage over earmarks was piqued by last year’s highway bill, a story of incredible excess. According to a study by the Heritage Foundation, the 1982 highway bill contained just ten earmarks. When the 1987 highway bill contained 152 earmarks, President Reagan vetoed it. Last year’s highway bill contained at least 6,371 earmarks and was a model of how earmarks drive an explosion in overall federal spending. The bill’s managers used millions of dollars of earmarks to buy support for billions of dollars in higher federal spending.

The highway bill included the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska, which will cost $223 million in taxpayer dollars to connect Ketchikan, a city of 9,000 people, to Gravina Island, population 50. An amendment to this year’s transportation appropriations bill by Rep. Mark Kirk would finally end this outrageous project. But Mr. Kirk’s work may be stripped out in conference committee.

Such an iconic boondoggle as the Bridge to Nowhere, along with the Duke Cunningham corruption scandal, galvanized public opinion, creating a unique opportunity for meaningful reform. One Wall Street Journal poll found that eliminating earmarks is now the top issue for a plurality of voters. A recent McLaughlin & Associates poll found that 75% of Americans want Congress to reduce or eliminate earmarks, a number that is the same for Democrats as well as Republicans.

While earmark reform has been stalled in a larger lobbying reform package, an interesting thing happened to the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, another item expected to be high on the agenda when Congress returns. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, the House version has more than 1,800 earmarks, up from 51 in last year’s bill. The legislation includes money for Andre Agassi’s charter school, the College Football Hall of Fame, and a master’s degree program in dental hygiene at Idaho State.

Funding of these very local projects with federal taxpayer money is wrong. If Congressmen believe so strongly in these programs then they should, as private individuals, contribute as much to them as they like. But they have no right to use taxpayer dollars, provided for expenditures in the national interest, on these parochial projects.

An earmark reform bill, on its own or as part of a larger lobbying reform package, will center on the commonsense notion of full disclosure, identifying who requested each earmark and disclosing his or her identity to the public. A Gallup poll earlier this year found that 41% of Americans want earmarks fully disclosed, while another 41% would go further and eliminate them completely. Only 11% favored keeping the system as it is.

Full disclosure could go a long way toward reducing earmarks, and there is still a good chance it will pass this year. But when Congressional leadership is brazen enough to move a bill tagged with earmarks right in the midst of the push for earmark reform, there is reason to doubt how serious they are about reform. Congressmen should bear in mind, however, that voters are angry enough to elect a new Congress that will end earmarking if this one won’t.

Mr. Kerpen is a policy analyst in Washington.