By Tait Militana, CQ Staff

A handful of House Republicans are using this year’s appropriations process to push provisions that would block future federal spending on transit and construction projects they oppose.

RIDING THE RAILS: McClintock used a floor amendment to cut a transit project in Pelosi’s district. (BILL CLARK / CQ ROLL CALL)

The tactic is unusual and looks a lot like an earmark — except in reverse. Rather than adding spending for a very specific project, they are trying to take it away.

Late in June, for instance, California Republican Tom McClintock successfully attached an amendment to the House version of the Transportation-HUD spending bill for fiscal 2013 that would prohibit money from being used for a light rail and subway expansion project in downtown San Francisco.

McClintock vigorously opposes the Third Street Light Rail Phase 2 Central Subway project, although it does not lie in his district. In fact, he represents an area of northeastern California along the Nevada and Oregon borders. The light rail project is in the district of Nancy Pelosi , the House Democratic leader.

On the floor, McClintock said the project was a “folly” that would cost federal taxpayers $1 billion. John W. Olver of Massachusetts, the senior Democrat on the Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee, wondered aloud though whether McClintock’s opposition “is not based on some kind of internal politics and not on sound policy.”

Pelosi’s deputy press secretary, Carlos Sanchez, called the House vote “a minor setback that can be fixed in conference” between the House and the Senate.

Meanwhile, Ohio Republican Steve Chabot included language in the same transportation spending bill to block money for a light rail project in Cincinnati, which is in his own district. Press secretary Katie Streicher said Chabot “is not trying to stop the project altogether. We just have higher priorities here in the district.”

Jaime Herrera Beutler , a Washington state Republican, wrote an amendment to the bill to stop funding for flood protection walls along Interstate 5. She opposes the project not for its cost, but because she says it wouldn’t protect businesses and residents in her district. Herrera Beutler withdrew the amendment after she says she received assurances that her criticisms would be addressed.

“I can’t allow a plan that only protects valuable government property while leaving residents’ lives, properties and livelihoods vulnerable,” she said in a press release.

Such amendments are a new feature in the spending debate that began when Republicans banned earmarks after they gained control of the House in 2010. Federal money is still used to finance local projects, but much of the power to secure targeted appropriations has been taken out of the hands of individual lawmakers, who have since sought new ways to influence spending.

For decades, lawmakers included so-called policy riders on appropriations bills to broadly block spending on programs they oppose, particularly when it comes to hot-button social issues. And while the tactic to block funding for local projects isn’t unprecedented, it is uncommon and is being used more publicly this year, with most of the language proposed through floor amendments.

“This is relatively rare, certainly at this level,” said Thomas A. Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a budget watchdog group.