It is often said
that politics makes strange bedfellows, but apparently hurricanes
have far stranger effects. On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi announced that she would offer up $70 million, out of the
$129 million in highway bill earmarks that she won for her
district, to offset the cost of the Katrina relief effort,
surpassing the 50 percent target set in the Heritage Foundation's
initial
highway bill "give-back" proposal. And on Wednesday, members of
the House's Republican Study Committee (RSC), a conservative group,
made a similar pledge. RSC members including Reps. Mike Pence, Jeb
Hensarling, and Jeff Flake, all known for their fiscal activism,
matched Pelosi and offered up all earmarked projects as part of an
RSC spending proposal that contains hundreds of billion in
cuts.
These are bold
proposals, especially considering the time and effort that Members
of Congress put into securing earmarked highway bill projects and
the favor that those projects curry back home. It should be no
surprise, then, that many other Members are reluctant to give back
anything. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whom we would have
figured a more likely RSC bedfellow than Rep. Pelosi, seems
"unenthusiastic" about returning transportation dollars to pay for
rebuilding infrastructure along the battered Gulf Coast, according
to the San Francisco Chronicle.
"My earmarks are pretty important to that region," DeLay explained
to reporters yesterday. "The bill creates hundreds of thousands of
jobs. It's an economic engine."
Indeed, Rep.
DeLay's home state of Texas did fare especially well in the highway
bill, garnering more money for earmarked projects, and more money
for low-priority earmarked projects, than all but five other
states-$754 million, in total. This includes about $114 million for
projects around Sugarland, DeLay's district-just a bit less than
Rep. Pelosi's San Francisco received. Last week, Utt
identified a few of Texas's low-priority highway bill projects
that could perhaps be put to higher use powering Louisiana or
Mississippi's economic engine. Among them:
- $800,000 for
regional bicycle routes on existing highways in Austin, Texas;
- $3,820,000 to
construct Mission Trails Project Packages 4 & 5 in San Antonio,
Texas;
- $1,200,000 for
development of one-story 300-vehicle parking facility;
- $750,000 to
construct a pedestrian/bicycle trail in the Sunnyside area of
Houston, Texas;
- $3,300,000 to
build a bike trail at Chacon Creek in Laredo, Texas;
- $7,680,000 for
the Bicycle and Pedestrian Trial Network in East Austin, Texas;
and
- $1,600,000 to
construct landscaping and other pedestrian amenities in segments of
the Old Spanish Trail and Griggs Road rights-of-ways.
If Rep. DeLay were
to follow Minority Leader Pelosi's bold endorsement of the Heritage
Foundation's proposal and flag these and other low-priority Texas
earmarks for contribution to the relief effort, the rest of the
Texas delegation would surely follow his lead.
It is also
essential that ordinary rank-and-file Members join in the effort,
as many Members may refuse to sign on and contribute their hard-won
earmarks, no matter how great the need in the areas damaged by
Hurricane Katrina. Fortunately, every state delegation has ample
low-hanging fruit within its reach. For example, the Virginia
delegation could easily justify cutting many of the state's
earmarks to privileged constituencies, such as:
- $600,000 to
construct horse riding trails and associated facilities in the High
Knob area of Jefferson National Forest;
- $240,000 for the
construction of the Virginia Blue Ridge Trail in Amherst County,
Virginia;
- $400,000 for the
construction of a trail along the Smith River in Henry County;
- $2,560,000 for
the Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail Corridor;
- $1,200,000 for
the Blue Ridge Music Center; and
- $1,200,000 to
improve the Staunton, Virginia, "streetscape."
Virginia's earmark
list includes dozens more equally frivolous projects, adding up to
hundreds of millions of dollars, in total. Surely, Virginians would
be willing to delay or forgo these projects to contribute to the
Katrina relief effort. Cutting just half of Virginia's highway bill
earmarks would save over $250 million that could be put to higher
use.
If every state
delegation were to follow suit (voluntarily or at the behest of a
congressional majority committed to cuts), over $12 billion in
low-priority spending could be redirected to the Gulf Coast and put
to work rebuilding the bridges, highways, overpasses, and transit
infrastructure that Katrina destroyed, helping the region get back
on its feet faster than it otherwise would have. Taxpayers, as
well, would benefit from the offsetting effect of canceling such
unnecessary spending. And many local parties due to be affected by
earmarked projects would benefit, too-despite the fierce combat for
earmarks in Congress, the resulting projects often benefit only
narrow interests and are unpopular with communities. Rep. Pelosi's
bold pledge of nearly 55 percent of her district's earmark funding
sets an even higher example that could do even more good.
Offsetting the
cost of the Katrina relief effort with funding from low-priority
projects and programs is the fiscally responsible thing to do, and
strong leadership like that exercised by Minority Leader Pelosi and
the Republican Study Committee could make this proposal a reality.
Though they are ideologically opposed on many issues, Pelosi and
the RSC have much common ground given the magnitude of Katrina's
destruction, the state of the federal budget, and the utter
frivolity of much highway bill spending. If more of the House's
leaders on both sides of the aisle sign on to the
"give-back," what seemed an improbability just a week ago will have
strong bipartisan momentum and lead the way to a fiscally
responsible approach to paying for Katrina rebuilding.
Andrew M. Grossman
is Senior Writer, and Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., is
Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A.
Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, at The Heritage
Foundation.