It’s good to be Ken Calvert.

While most Americans can barely afford rent, the longest-serving California Republican in Congress has been quietly steering millions in federal earmarks toward projects suspiciously close to properties he personally owns.

Since Congress brought back earmarking in 2022, Calvert has funneled more than $100 million into his Riverside County district. Generous! Except $16 million of that landed within several miles of his own rental properties – ten commercial properties in the Corona area, valued at up to $26 million, pulling in as much as $805,000 a year in rental income.

Among the greatest hits:

• $2 million to widen a bridge in Corona. Calvert owns half a dozen properties within two miles of that bridge.
• $3 million for toll lanes on Interstate 15, with the northernmost point about four miles south of his rental properties.
• $5 million for a rail line study where one Metrolink stop is just blocks from several of his properties.

But this isn’t Calvert’s first rodeo. Back in 2005, he and a business partner bought a vacant lot near an Air Force base for $550,000. Months later, President Bush signed a highway bill injecting $8 million into the area. Calvert flipped the land for $985,000 – a 79% profit. His defense? People were “trying to manufacture controversy.”

The Washington Post flagged the pattern as far back as 2012. The Los Angeles Times raised alarms in 2006. And yet here we are in 2026, and Calvert is still at it – because nobody’s stopped him.

Twenty years of funneling taxpayer money toward his own real estate portfolio. That’s not public service. That’s a business plan.