Click here
for a list of FY 2008 pork projects
Despite pledges to rein in pork, the Democratic Congress has
included a combined 11,351 pork projects in the House and Senate
appropriations bills.[1] If this legislation passes, thousands of
government grants will be distributed based on politics, lobbying,
and/or campaign donations, rather than on merit. Members of
Congress should listen to the demands of frustrated voters and
eliminate these projects.
Democrats Return to the Pork
Barrel
Democratic leaders pledged to rein in the practice of
pork-barrel spending that had skyrocketed under the Republican
majority and had spawned numerous criminal corruption
investigations.
First, congressional Democrats pledged to clean up the
pork-barrel process. While the ethics bill signed by President Bush
contained some reforms, such as requiring the names of each
earmark's congressional sponsor, lawmakers significantly weakened
the rest of the bill, by:
- Removing a provision to ban the trading of pork projects
for votes;
- Weakening provisions aimed at stopping pork projects
that financially benefit lawmakers;
- Transferring Senate earmark enforcement powers from the
neutral Senate parliamentarian to the partisan Senate Majority
Leader;
- Permitting bills to be voted on without first disclosing
pork projects; and
- Weakening a provision requiring that pork projects be
made available on the Internet before congressional votes.[2]
That is not all. Reversing earlier pledges, Congress applied
these new rules only to earmarks in appropriations bills and chose
to ignore earmarks in tax, entitlement, or authorization bills.[3]
Earlier this year, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David
Obey (D-Wisconsin) announced his intention to keep secret the pork
projects in spending bills until after the bills had passed
the House; the ensuing public backlash forced him to back down. The
Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently announced that it
will no longer track pork projects at all. By and large, the
Democratic majority has not sufficiently backed up their reform
rhetoric.[4]
The Democrats' other pledge was to cut the number of pork
projects in half, from the 2005 peak of 13,492 to 6,746. According
to the Office of Management and Budget, the number of pork projects
in the spending bills thus far totals 6,651 in the House and 4,700
in the Senate, respectively.[5] If lawmakers follow the typical practice of
adding House and Senate earmarks together in conference committee,
they will easily break their pledge.
Two other events stand out. Following the collapse of the I-35W
bridge in Minneapolis, Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) offered an
amendment calling on the Senate to place a temporary moratorium on
transportation pork until all structurally deficient bridges are
repaired. Amazingly, the Senate voted 82-14 to prioritize pork over
bridge repairs in the transportation budget.[6]
Then, the Department of Veterans Affairs proposed selling $4
billion worth of its valuable but vacant land in a super-wealthy
area of west Los Angeles. This $4 billion could then have been used
to provide additional medical care for America's veterans. However,
this land is also surrounded by the Beverly Hills estates of
individuals like Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise, Tim McGraw, and
Barry Bonds. When locals reportedly complained that this
development would, among other things, impede the views from their
mansions, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) inserted an
earmark to cancel the land sale. The Senate voted 66-25 to side
with the Beverly Hills millionaires.[7]
The Case Against Pork
Historically, Congress funded grant programs and then asked
federal agencies, governors, and mayors to award the grants
competitively to the most capable applicants. But over the past
decade, Congress has increasingly bypassed such competition and
selected (or "earmarked") grant recipients on its own, such as the
Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy and the Montana World
Trade Center. Instead of submitting persuasive grant proposals to
unbiased agencies, grant seekers today are often forced to play the
Washington influence game and hire lobbyists to win federal
funds.[8]
Giving lawmakers their own pot of taxpayer dollars to distribute
as they wish invites corruption. Not surprisingly, the media has
been saturated with stories of lawmakers earmarking federal grants
to projects directly benefiting campaign contributors, friends,
relatives, and even themselves.
In addition to waste and corruption, lawmakers' obsession with
pork raises a larger concern about the role of the federal
government. Members of the U.S. Congress--a legislature that has
historically debated national concerns such as war, Americans'
rights, and broad economic policy--have become, in the words of
Rep. Dan Lungren (R-California), "mere errand boysfor local
government and constituents."[9]
So far this year, Congress has failed to address the looming
tidal wave of spending for Social Security and Medicare, but it did
decide that Boydton, Virginia, could use a new walking tour.
Congress has not solved the burgeoning problem of the Alternative
Minimum Tax, but it did decide that some bike trails in Highland,
Indiana, should be upgraded. Vital national issues are being
ignored by lawmakers who instead focus their energy on determining
how much in tax dollars to send to the Hunting & Fishing Museum
of Pennsylvania.
Tending to such matters is the responsibility of state and local
governments. Perhaps Members of Congress do not believe that local
governments can handle the job; former House Speaker Dennis Hastert
(R-Illinois) endorsed congressional pork by asking rhetorically,
"Who knows best where to put a bridge or a highway or a red light
in their district?"[10] Not mayors or city councils,
apparently.
Of course, lawmakers say that pork projects are a vital way to
"bring home federal dollars." In reality, they are carved out of
funding streams that were already coming back to state and local
governments and private organizations anyway. The money earmarked
in the $5 billion Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program
for parks, pools, street signs, and community centers just reduces
the pot of money left over to distribute to local governments for
the projects of their choosing, such as housing subsidies for poor
families now stuck on the waiting list. But pork generates
publicity and campaign contributions for lawmakers--who in fact
have only tied strings to federal money that was already coming
home.
Conclusion
If the attached pork projects were truly worthy, they should
have no problem getting funded through the regular merit-based
grant application process. Instead, Congress felt it necessary to
bypass this process and mandate federal funding for these projects
without first having to justify the projects to a federal agency.
Such pork projects are a major reason why Congress's popularity
remains at a historic low with the American people.
Click
here for a list of FY 2008 pork projects
Brian M. Riedl is Grover M.
Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe
Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage
Foundation.