When the House divvied up $282.1 million in earmarks for schools, hospitals and social programs, many poor congressional districts took a back seat to those represented by appropriators, party leaders and politically vulnerable lawmakers.

Democrats writing the fiscal 2008 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill (HR 3043), which carries the largest pot of domestic discretionary spending, made decisions much the same way as their Republican predecessors. Political considerations appeared to be paramount.

The Labor-HHS bill’s leading earmarker is Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whose $4.1 million for San Francisco projects is slightly more than the $4 million that Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey, D-Wis., will send to his own 7th District if all of his earmarks become law.

Obey held the fiscal 2008 bill’s earmarked spending to half the total in the fiscal 2005 law (PL 108-447), the most recent version that included earmarks. But the distribution pattern is familiar. Appropriators and party leaders would get the largest servings, followed by politically vulnerable colleagues and committee chairmen.

Democrats holding politically safe seats in poor districts that reliably vote Democratic are typically in line to receive less than half the earmarked sums set aside for vulnerable incumbents — “frontline” members, mostly from suburban swing districts.

The disparity can be seen by comparing the proposed disbursements to Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles, who represents the fourth-poorest House district as measured by median household income, with the earmarks corralled by Ron Klein of Florida, whose 22nd District includes the beachfront condominiums in Boca Raton and gated retirement communities in Palm Beach and Broward counties.

Klein, who unseated Republican E. Clay Shaw Jr. with 51 percent of the vote last fall, would get $825,000 in Labor-HHS earmarks, including $325,000 for the South Florida Science Museum.

Becerra, now in his eighth term, voted with a majority of House Democrats 99 percent of the time during each of the past three sessions and is the only Latino in the House Democratic leadership. His district would receive $400,000 in earmarks from the Labor-HHS-Education bill, including money for literacy, mental services at a homeless shelter, a program to combat juvenile obesity, diabetes and hypertension, and a nurse assistant training program.

Klein can assume the GOP will make an aggressive run at him next year, while Becerra’s seat is in no danger.

Becerra declined to comment on the earmark figures, but Jesse L. Jackson Jr., D-Ill., asked “Are those constituents any less American than someone on the front line?”

“This should not be a continuation of the red-to-blue game,” said Jackson, who is a member of the Appropriations subcommittee that wrote the Labor-HHS-Education bill and thus secured more than $2 million in earmarks.

Pelosi and Obey did not want to discuss their earmark distribution philosophy, but there is support on both sides of the aisle for using earmarks as a political tactic.

“If you’re going to earmark, it is absolutely senseless for the party not to be mindful of the people who are vulnerable and to use that as a tool to help them,” said Scott Lilly, a former Appropriations Committee staff director under Obey who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Although five Republican appropriators, including two subcommittee chairmen, were defeated last fall, lawmakers still see a political benefit in bringing home cash.

“It makes a big difference,” said Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, who narrowly won re-election to an eighth term last fall. Pryce said earmarks for hospitals and schools help her highlight her commitment to health care and education, issues on which she has connected with constituents in western Columbus and its suburbs.

“I don’t think it wins the election for you, but it helps to show you have some clout,” said freshman Jason Altmire, D-Pa., who unseated Republican Melissa A. Hart last year in a classic Pittsburgh-area swing district that gave President Bush 54 percent of its vote in the 2004 presidential election.

Other defenders of the Democratic leadership’s strategy note that the neediest districts would receive more money under the Appropriations Committee’s Labor-HHS bill — regardless of earmarks — because the measure would provide some $10.8 billion more in discretionary spending for social programs than Bush requested.

The 66 House appropriators kept for themselves 34 percent of this year’s total earmarked spending in the Labor-HHS bill, laying claim to $95.9 million and leaving $186.3 million for other House members.

Of the bill’s top 42 earmark recipients, 41 are appropriators or party leaders. The other is Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., who got $2.75 million, including $2 million for a public policy center at City College of New York, to be named in his honor.

“There’s an uneven distribution of appropriations,” said Maxine Waters, D-Calif., whose district would get $400,000 under the committee’s bill. “It’s something I’m concerned about.”

Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly defended the Speaker’s decision to take the largest chunk of earmarked money. “All of the Speaker’s earmarks are targeted to the needs of low-income and vulnerable populations in San Francisco — chronically homeless, people living with HIV/AIDS, the uninsured, children with disabilities, low-income workers, low-income K-12 students and people with mental illness and substance abuse problems,” he said.

House Republicans are distributing earmarks differently than Democrats, but the same general rules apply.

The Labor-HHS bill’s high-dollar Republicans are James T. Walsh of New York, the ranking GOP member of the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, at $3.25 million, and Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., the ranking Republican appropriator, at $3 million.

Politically vulnerable Republicans including Pryce and Jon Porter of Nevada would fare better than most Democrats, drawing more than $1 million apiece for favored projects. Others, including Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania, Rick Renzi of Arizona and Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado, would get $800,000 each.

Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and GOP Conference Chairman Adam H. Putnam of Florida each have $1 million worth of earmarks in the bill. Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, does not request earmarks, and this year, Eric Cantor of Virginia, the chief deputy Republican whip, is joining him.