This page deals with money set aside for political purposes, for a small and specific part of the
country, to benefit only a few people at everyone else's expense. Another page,
called Money Down the Drain, deals with cases
where tax dollars have been wasted through government inefficiency and recklessness at the national
level.
The problem of wasteful spending and "earmarks" is especially difficult to
solve because members of both political parties are equally eager to spend tax dollars on
worthless and unnecessary "pet projects." In this regard, there is no difference between
the two political parties.
There is now a new page (here) for
the discussion of government money spent on professional sports teams and stadiums, which
are some of the most inexcusable corporate welfare projects.
Farm subsidies are another variety of
corporate welfare.
Somewhere on this site there is also a Government Waste Page, which
lists a number of excellent places to cut federal spending.
Also take a look at the Huge list of government
agencies. There is a bureau and a bureaucrat for every imaginable
function of our overgrown government. And each one has a deputy and a secretary.
This strikes some people as anti-American, but it really is not: I
believe It's Time to Scrap NASA. NASA
spends about $18 billion a year and doesn't really do anything. Is your life
really any better because there is an international space station? NASA is a pork barrel
project that only benefits Houston and Cape Canaveral.
New! Other specific examples of pork projects
are listed on a page of their own. The page you're reading now is about the problem
of congressional favors and pet projects in general.
Introduction: If you take home
less than your gross pay, it is only because someone has siphoned money out of your
paycheck. The federal government takes money from you under threat of imprisonment,
including "contributions" to Social Security, which you will probably never see again,
and Medicare taxes, which are not counted as income tax, and FICA, which is just another
income tax. After your income is taxed, you still have to pay state and local
sales taxes, gasoline tax, and numerous other taxes on everyday purchases.
(State and federal taxes, on average, are 43 cents per gallon of
gasoline.*)
In many cases, your money ends up in the hands of someone else who is too lazy
to work. Or it may end up in any of a hundred unnecessary government agencies,
some of which are listed
here and
here. Or
you may end up buying a new stadium for
a professional sports franchise. Wasted tax money is one of the easiest topics on
this web site to write about, because it's not difficult to find places to
trim the federal (or state) budget. Getting a politician interested in
solutions is another matter. Once you read the information on this page,
it's up to you to apply pressure to your Congressman to put the brakes on
unnecessary spending.
Republicans (theoretically) (used to) believe the money you earn is yours and that government in a
free society has the right to take only as much as is needed to perform those limited
functions, which are appropriate to it. Democrats believe government has a right to
use your money as it sees fit to fund welfare programs, to redistribute wealth and return
to you only that portion of your money which is absolutely
necessary.*.
Sooner or later, wasteful spending of tax dollars is bound to result in either a massive
tax revolt or the bankruptcy of the United States. When either one occurs, some
of us will be able to look back and point to examples of wasteful spending like the ones
on this page. There is so much government waste and fraud to be found, and there is not
only waste, but
extravagant pork barrel spending
intended to perpetuate the re-election of incumbent politicians. I can't help but believe
that term limits in
the U.S. House and Senate would put a stop to
much of this. The items listed below are but a few examples.
Citizens Against Government Waste is
an excellent source of information about government waste. Until recently
I had so much of their information on this page that it ballooned into quite an enormous
production. To make this page load faster, the CAGW material has been moved
here. If the topic of
wasteful spending is important to you — and I hope it is — please check
out the CAGW page as well as this one.
New book: Downsizing the Federal Government by
Chris Edwards, who is director of tax policy at the Cato Institute. He holds an MA in
economics from George Mason University in Virginia.
2005
Congressional Pig Book Summary. The federal government's expanding
waistline (a record $427 billion deficit) has resulted from too many members
of Congress believing that the United States Treasury is their own personal ATM. Our
elected officials have let themselves go whole hog while letting down every hard-working
American taxpayer. The 2005 Congressional Pig Book is the latest installment of
Citizens Against Government Waste's (CAGW) 15-year exposé of pork-barrel
spending. This year's list includes $3,270,000 for the Capitol Visitor
Center; $100,000 for the Tiger Woods Foundation; and $75,000 for Onondaga County
for the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame.
The dried-up veto
pen: Last week, I was asked to testify before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.
… I explained I am not particularly a deficit hawk, nor do the size of the Bush
tax cuts bother me. What really bothers me is the orgy of spending by Republicans. It is
just appalling that the recent highway bill had 5,000 "earmarks" in it, almost without
exception, utterly unjustified pork barrel projects.
A History of
Earmarks (or rather, the lack thereof). Just take a look at the history of the Defense
Appropriations Bill: Taxpayers for Common Sense calculated that the 1970 Defense Appropriations
Bill had a dozen earmarks; the 1980 bill had 62 earmarks; and by 2005, the defense bill had skyrocketed
to 2,671 earmarks. The most recent bill spends money on anything from the eradication of brown
tree snakes in Guam, to a virtual reality spray paint simulator system in Pine City, Minnesota. (And
remember, this is the Defense Appropriations Bill. What do snakes and spray paint have to do with
maintaining our nation's security?)
Pelosi:
Just Forget the Word 'Earmark'. The more than 32,000 earmarks requested in the Homeland Security
spending bill have roiled the House this week, and now Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) wants the word 'earmark'
to just go away. In a Tuesday press conference about appropriation bills, Pelosi said, "Why don't we leave
here today forgetting the word earmark?" She said they should be called "legislative directives" instead.
The
Do-Nothing Congress: [Scroll down] The Do-Nothing Congress also promised to correct the very real
problem of hidden legislative earmarks. But how was this done? By changing legislative procedure so
that these earmarks do not even show up in subcommittee reports, but are rather hidden even more deeply in conference
committee reports of appropriation bills. That makes the problem of abuse by earmark worse, not better.
Congress forgets ban on
pet projects. Get out the trough, it's feeding time. Congress has decided that an election
year with recession written all over it is not the time to be giving up those job-producing "pork" projects
bemoaned by both parties' presidential candidates.
Only
ABC Highlights Dem Gluttony on Pork Spending. Of the three morning shows, only ABC's "Good
Morning America" highlighted the implications of a new report on pork barrel spending by the group Citizens
Against Government Waste [CAGW]. GMA was the sole network morning program to mention that Democrats broke
their campaign promise to cut such pork projects in half.
Pork
For Christmas (For Some People). Earmarks amount to kickbacks for groups and projects within
individual Congressional districts and are well-known for their wastefulness. They are often, though not
always, intended to reward local campaign donors or personal friends. This year new rules in the House of
Representatives would prohibit the addition of earmarks added to a bill in conference, but because the Omnibus
spending bill is being treated as an amendment from the Senate, it is exempt from those rules.
Bullies,
Muggers, Sneak Thieves, and Con Men. Government sneak thieves … specialize in legislative
riders, budgetary add-ons and earmarks, logrolling, omnibus "Christmas tree" bills, and other gimmicks designed
to conceal the size, the beneficiaries, and sometimes even the existence of their theft. At the end of
the day, the taxpayers find there's nothing left in the till, but they have little or no idea where all of
their money went.
What has the
Democratic congress done? After taking back the Congress, the Dems made many lofty promises,
such as killing "earmark" legislation and ending "pork barrel" politics. Instead, we got a Congress that
was incapable of passing a reasonable budget and instead passed an "Omnibus" bill that supposedly funds the
federal government for the next few months. But the new Democratic Congress actually exceeded the old
GOP Congress in earmark spending.
Texas reaps $2.2 billion in earmarks.
Texas corralled $2.2 billion in special projects from the federal government this year, including $294,000 for a
Houston zoo program and $22 million for an Army gymnasium near El Paso. … Earmarks are bipartisan. Sen.
Hutchison was the state's most successful proponent of such spending in 2007, bringing home $254 million in
projects. Every other Texas lawmaker in Congress except one, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, sought them.
U.S. senator wants probe of Coconut Road
earmark. An Oklahoma senator plans is planning to propose legislation next week that would force
a special congressional investigation to find out who set aside $10 million in a 2005 transportation
bill — after it won final House and Senate passage — to study a possible highway
interchange in Southwest Florida.
The Editor says...
How is it possible to add a $10 million spending project anonymously? As long as any spending bill or
amendment can be introduced anonymously, at any level of government, we're all in danger.
Sen. Coburn's Coconut Road
Amendment: The amendment would form a joint committee to investigate the secret $10 million
earmark for Florida's Coconut Road.
GOP
Senators Opt for Pork. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the five-term [Sen. Thad] Cochran
is the new congressional king of pork this year, with $774 million worth of earmarks in 12 spending bills.
He has dethroned his predecessor as the top GOP appropriator, Ted Stevens, a six-termer who is the senior
Republican in the Senate and now ranks second, with $502 million in pork.
'Earmark' cash aids
Democrat freshmen. A year ago, Democrats won control of Congress in part by criticizing billions
of dollars spent on pet projects. Now, freshmen Democrats are benefiting from the same kind of spending,
a USA TODAY analysis shows. All 49 of the new Democratic lawmakers sponsored or co-sponsored at
least one project — known as an "earmark" — inserted into the House and Senate spending
bills, the analysis found. Freshmen Democrats were the sole sponsors on projects worth $351 million,
an average of $7.6 million. Republicans got approval for projects worth $65 million, or
$5 million each.
The
new earmark rules won't stop corruption. Randy Cunningham, the former Republican representative
from California who has retired to a prison work camp in Arizona, is dictating the congressional agenda now more
than he ever did when he was in office. … Nearly every story about earmark reform, which is supposed to
discourage legislators from using narrowly targeted spending to curry favor with donors and constituents,
mentions Cunningham.
Congress Oinks its Way to a Spending
Bill. If character is what we do when we think nobody is looking, then congressional leaders
responsible for the 3,500-plus-page Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 have a lot of explaining to do.
They should start by telling us why they posted their "omnibus spending bill" on the Internet only hours before
voting on it and in a format that made searching the text laborious, at best.
James
Madison to America: This Is What We Warned You About. James Madison wrote a pro-constitution
editorial (known to history as Federalist 10), that described in prescient terms precisely why political
factions are dangerous. When there is liberty, he argued, some men will create more wealth than others.
Property and class factions are the result. Members of these different economic classes are tempted to
pass laws which help themselves at the expense of the overall public good. Over time this excessive
self-regard distorts the gift of reason and causes people to think and speak in ways that seem strange to
the country at large.
Pork Barrel Stonewall: The
Democratic majority came to power in January promising to do a better job on earmarks. They appeared to
preserve our reforms and even take them a bit further. I commended Democrats publicly for this action.
Unfortunately, the leadership reversed course. Desperate to advance their agenda, they began trading
earmarks for votes, dangling taxpayer-funded goodies in front of wavering members to win their support for
leadership priorities.
A wink, a whisper
and a pet project is funded. As federal prosecutors try to dig deeper into the spending practices
of New Jersey legislators, they might struggle to identify an elementary piece of any case — the paper
trail. Senators and Assembly members added more than $1.25 billion in last-minute spending
to the state budget in the past five years, agreeing to let taxpayers fund pet projects that typically
escape public disclosure or debate.
GOP
will let Craig keep his earmarks. Senate Republican leaders have backed off from pressuring
Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) to resign his seat, giving the beleaguered lawmaker a glimpse of hope that he
may last in Congress long enough to save his career.
Flake still preaching
against earmarks. Although [Congressman Jeff] Flake did prevail against the Christmas-tree
funding, he lost by wide margins on votes to cut other earmarks that would seem easy targets for budget
hawks. Take, for example, a $250,000 grant for a wine and culinary center in Prosser, Wash. Or
$100,000 for a hunting and fishing museum in Tionesta, Pa. Or $628,843 to pay for grape genetics
research at Cornell University.
Study: For Sixth Straight Year,
No One in Congress Had Voting Agenda to Cut Federal Spending. Members of Congress voted to spend
an average of more than $150 million of taxpayer funds for every hour they were in session during 2005 and
2006 — just one of many fascinating observations made in the non-partisan National Taxpayers Union
Foundation's (NTUF's) latest VoteTally study. Since 2001, not a single Senator or Representative has cast
votes whose net effect would reduce the level of federal outlays.
Earmark Cover-Up: Voters opted for
change in Congress, but on earmarks it looks as if they'll only be getting more smoke and mirrors.
Democrats promised reform and instituted "a moratorium" on all earmarks until the system was cleaned up.
Now the appropriations committees are privately accepting pork-barrel requests again.
The King Of Pork — Part II.
"Earmarks" are better known as "pork." Basically, they are paybacks to political cronies or ways to
bring money to a politico's voters to make sure he or she is re-elected. They are usually unrelated
to the bill to which they are attached, but the porkers won't vote for the necessary parts of the bill unless
their payback is included. The worst part is that most pork is for unnecessary and unwanted projects.
Trimming
the fat from pork-barrel politics. The 109th Republican Congress, in one of its last acts before
adjournment, responded to the demands of voters to end the pork-barrel spending madness — at least
for now. A pack of conservative Republican warriors, led by Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Tom
Coburn of Oklahoma and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, blocked a giant, fat-filled omnibus spending bill that was
stuffed with more than 10,000 waste-ridden, earmarked pork projects that would have cost $17 billion.
Earmarks
and Congressional Corruption: Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, recently reported that every
private entity [Representative John] Murtha (D-PA) favored with an earmark in this year's defense bill has
given money to his campaign in the last two years. Political Action Committees (PACs) and employees of
the 26 groups in Murtha's district that received Federal monies have contributed $413,250 to him, $100,750 of
which was donated in the two weeks leading up to March 16, the original deadline for lawmakers to file
their earmark requests. Murtha rewarded these groups for their political contributions by allocating
$114.5 million to them.
The Pork King Keeps His
Crown. The new earmark disclosure rules put into effect by Congress confirm the pre-eminence of
Representative John Murtha at procuring eye-popping chunks of pork for contractors he helped put in business
in Johnstown, Pa. The Pennsylvania Democrat, a power player on defense appropriations, exudes pride, not
embarrassment, for delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in largesse to district beneficiaries. They,
in turn, requite with hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations. Mr. Murtha led all
House members this year, securing $162 million in district favors, according to the watchdog group
Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Meet Congress'
"King Of Pork". His most notorious project is the government agency that the government doesn't
want: The National Drug Intelligence Center, also in Murtha's hometown. Every year the White House
tries to close it because they already have a Drug Intelligence Center. But Murtha keeps the duplicate
open using half-a-billion dollars in earmarks. "You want to drive a stake through its heart but you
can't," says Leslie Paige for Citizens Against Government Waste. "Because Congressman Murtha continues
to put this in." Murtha's power plays are no surprise to those who've followed him since the 1980s
bribery scandal known as ABSCAM.
How Lawmaker Rebuilt Hometown on
Earmarks. If John Murtha were a businessman, he'd be the biggest employer in this town. The
powerful U.S. congressman has used his clout on Capitol Hill to create thousands of jobs and steer billions of
dollars in federal spending to help his hometown in western Pennsylvania recover from devastating floods and
the flight of its steelmakers. More is on the way. In the massive 2008 military-spending bill now
before Congress — which could go to a House-Senate conference as soon as Thursday — Mr.
Murtha has steered more taxpayer funds to his congressional district than any other member.
Spending Cuts Even Democrats Can
Support: Although many "bridges to nowhere" are small potatoes, the number of potatoes is
large. A recent accounting by Taxpayers for Common Sense estimated 2005 earmarks at $24 billion;
most of this is pure pork. Adding big ticket items like manned space flight, Amtrak subsidies, mass
transit boondoggles like the Big Dig, senseless flood control projects undertaken by the Army Corps of
Engineers, and subsidized disaster insurance, not to mention state and local pork, would easily yield
substantial savings. [Approximately] $70 billion.
A Democrat victory in
November would produce even more pork. If Democrats win back control of the U.S. House of
Representatives in November, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran said he would use his position in the majority to help
funnel more funds to his Northern Virginia district. … "When I become chairman [of a House appropriations
subcommittee], I'm going to earmark the s··· out of it," Moran buoyantly told a crowd of 450
attending the event.
Update: Pelosi Will Bring 'Speaker
Pork' to San Francisco. Tip O'Neill secured down payments for Boston's Big Dig. Sam
Rayburn sent gushers of cash back to Texas, along with tax breaks that helped its oil industry.
Hospitals, schools and nonprofits in Dennis Hastert's hometown of Aurora, Ill., have seen millions roll
in during his reign. Now Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco is poised to follow them as speaker of
the House — a perch predecessors used to channel big cash to pet projects back home.
Speaker-to-be
is no stranger to earmarking. When the House passed a massive spending bill last November,
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi made sure her constituents knew what they were getting. "Pelosi Secures
$115 Million for San Francisco Transportation, Housing, Science and Arts," she proclaimed in a news
release. It wasn't an unusual announcement. Like many of her colleagues in Congress, Pelosi for
years has celebrated bringing home the bacon to her district.
Some things never
change. Even before the Democrats become the majority party in Congress, there are signs that
little of importance will change. New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick recently wrote a front-page
story in which he quotes Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) on "earmark reform." Inouye said, "I don't see any
monumental changes." Inouye will take the gavel from the current chairman of the defense appropriations
subcommittee, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). The two have what Kirkpatrick calls an "unusual bipartisan
camaraderie while divvying up projects."
Earmarks As Usual.
It's almost too stereotypical to be true: Even as the FBI and IRS raided the home of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens
this week as part of a corruption investigation, Congress is quietly moving to dismantle serious earmark reform.
If the Members are wondering why their approval ratings have gone subterranean, this is it.
New Democrats Leaders Love Pork Barrel
Spending. Senators Ted Stevens of Alaska and Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii are the best of friends
in the Senate, so close they call each other brother. Both are decorated veterans of World War II.
They have worked together for nearly four decades as senators from the two youngest and farthest-flung
states. And they share an almost unrivaled appetite for what some call political pork.
The
Real Reason For Federal Corruption: Federal legislators [have become] expert in the art of
misappropriating federal cash. Senator Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, single-handedly siphoned almost
$3 billion to West Virginia between 1991 and 2006, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.
"They call me 'The Pork King,'" Byrd once bragged. "They don't know how much I enjoy it."
One Byrd Gets Lion's Share
Of Earmarks. Byrd was the first senator to rack up a total of $1 billion in earmarks for his
home state. That was in 1999. Today he's past the $3 billion mark. In his famously
colorful Senate speeches, Byrd has repeatedly defended his earmarks.
Shutting Down the Senate's Favor
Factory. It is highly unlikely that Sen. Robert Byrd, a legendary king of pork returning as
Appropriations Committee chairman, will reverse the habits of a lifetime and listen to ordinary voters'
revulsion over excessive federal spending. "Voters want the earmark favor factory shut down, not turned
over to new management," said [Senator Tom] Coburn.
Yeah, right... Byrd says
no more earmarks. Sen. Robert Byrd joined the new House Appropriations chairman, David Obey,
D-Wis., in announcing a brand new day when it comes to spending federal taxpayer money. "There will be
no congressional earmarks," Obey and Byrd said in a joint statement. That ends the practice of sneaking
appropriations for local projects into federal budget bills, a practice if not invented by Byrd, at least
perfected by him in his first eight terms in the Senate.
The Porkbusters Hall of Shame: If you're a
West Virginian, you have to recognize a central truth: it's Robert Byrd's state -- you're just living
in it. In his over forty-eight years (!) in the United States Senate, Senator Byrd has achieved a
pork record that is second to none. From the Robert C. Byrd Expressway to the Robert C. Byrd
Freeway; the Robert C. Byrd Institute to the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building (both of them), Senator
Byrd has truly left his mark on West Virginia -- and the federal budget. It would be appropriate to
erect some kind of monument to his century-spanning resume -- except that he already did so himself.
Byrd Gives Rationale for
Congressional Earmarks. "An earmark is an economic need that many times falls between the cracks of
the Washington bureaucracy. When that happens, the people we represent cannot call some unelected bureaucrat
in the White House budget office. They cannot get a Cabinet Secretary on the line. When they need help,
they come to us, their elected representatives."
The Editor says...
I doubt if this was written by a 91-year-old man who just got out of the
hospital.* The
newspaper would have us believe that this article was written by Senator Byrd himself.
Following in Byrd's footsteps... Rep. Rangel Earmarks Funds for His Own
Building. New York Rep. Charles Rangel has been raising funds from taxpayers and corporations for
a center in Harlem to be named after a prominent U.S. congressman — Charles Rangel. The Democrat has
quietly raised nearly $25 million for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City
College, located in a four-story Harlem building and aimed at steering low-income and minority students
into politics, the New York Post reports.
Earmark
War on the Senate Floor. Sen. Jim DeMint (R.-S.C.) tried to persuade his fellow Senators to remove
a project sponsored by New York Rep. Charles Rangel (D.) that would give $2 million in federal money to the
Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Policy, the Rangel Conference Center, and the Charles Rangel Library at
the City College of New York. Freshman Rep. John Campbell (R.-Calif.) has sarcastically called the earmark
Rangel's "Monument to Me." Promotional literature describes the project as "kind of like a presidential
library, but without the president."
Democrats Can
Smell the Pork. The sterile, confused lame-duck session of the Republican-controlled 109th
Congress ended with a quiet victory by reformers that staved off an estimated 10,000 earmarks. But it
could not be called a farewell to pork. As the House approached adjournment Thursday, Democrats signaled
they may countenance a return to free and easy spending ways when they assume the majority Jan. 4.
Better Late Than Never. It's
been years since federal agencies have screamed this loudly about fiscal discipline being imposed on them.
GOP Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina have decided to take a stand against
overspending by objecting to the nearly 10,000 earmarks, or member-sponsored pork projects, larded
throughout the spending bills Congress is currently considering.
The
Dangerous Spread Of Earmarks. There is no doubt that earmarking has become an overused tool
used by Senators and Representatives to fund projects with Federal taxpayers' money. Citizens Against
Government Waste identified nearly 10,000 projects stuffed into appropriations bills this year, representing
over $29 billion.
Congress
closes with a pork-filled flourish. Christmas arrived Wednesday for the kidney dialysis
industry. That's when President Bush signed into law the last major piece of legislation approved by the
outgoing Congress. It was a lavish hodgepodge that included a $100 million-a-year boost in the Medicare
reimbursement rates for dialysis providers who proved to be generous contributors to important legislators,
notably House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas of Bakersfield.
Dennis Hastert, Real Estate Tycoon.
Denny Hastert is a real estate investment genius, turning a private real estate trust into a $1.5 million
profit (and then some) in just seven months. Being Speaker of the House and arranging for a new highway
to run less than three miles from his isolated parcel had nothing to it. Of course. How could one
think otherwise?
Democrat's earmark wasted $37 million on a
project with no application. Once begun, promising but speculative programs like
Project M are hard to kill, sustained by members of Congress who want to keep jobs in their
districts, military officials who want to keep their options open and businesspeople who want to
keep their companies afloat.
Exposing
government waste. Made infamous recently by the much-maligned Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska,
an earmark is a budgetary gimmick used to tack funding for special or local interest group projects onto
appropriations bills. Such a practice frees politicians from the pesky burden of publicly debating
how to spend taxpayer dollars. Think of it like sneaking a Snickers bar into the shopping cart
without telling mom.
Update: Alaska
Ends Plan for 'bridge to Nowhere'. Some called it a bridge to the future. Others called it the
bridge to nowhere. On Friday [9/21/2007], Alaska decided the bridge really was going nowhere, officially
abandoning the project in Ketchikan that became a national symbol of federal pork-barrel spending.
Trading votes
for pork. It looks like a scene out of an old movie: one about shady politicians and back-room
deals. You can almost smell the cigar smoke and see the dirty money changing hands. But unfortunately,
it's not an old film. It's a real-life picture of the United States Congress. The cigars are gone,
but the dirty deal-making is thoroughly up-to-date. And at the head of it is Rep. John Murtha (D)
of Pennsylvania.
Here to Stay. For $495, an
outfit called TheCapitol.Net will teach you how to feed at the trough. The firm, which does training
seminars on how Washington works, is offering a one-day course on how to get an earmark. If you sign
up, the folks at TheCapitol.Net will even teach you how to counter "public criticism of pork."
Don't
know how earmarks work? Neither does anyone else. Special interest
groups – who pay the lobbyists – who hob-knob the Congressmen – who
slide in the unauthorized Rock and Roll Hall of Fames and Sea Otter Commissions while the rest of us aren't
looking — they all know how earmarks work. And that's exactly the problem; we the taxpayers
are in the dark. We have no recourse in how our own tax dollars are spent, and that must change.
Don't
know how earmarks work? Neither does anyone else. (Part 2): Taxpayer
dollars shouldn't be the petty cash from which local and state governments pull to promote projects,
especially when those projects don't even benefit the majority of taxpayers, but loopholes in
Congressional lobbying rules actually encourage this behavior.
A Primer on Lobbyists, Earmarks, and
Congressional Reform. A growing body of evidence suggests that illegal and questionable
lobbying practices are not uncommon and that incidents such as those involving Mr. Abramoff have likely
been repeated in similar transactions between other lobbyists and Members.
Senate
Earmark Reforms Quietly Gutted. A three-word rule change quietly made to Congress's newly-enacted
lobby reform package was recently discovered that significantly reduces disclosure requirements for the
earmarks each senator requests.
The greatest single
hypocrisy: Earmarking, as I've had occasion to remark before, is the modern method of
distributing "pork." The term comes from how one marks a pig's ear, to determine whom it belongs
to. Senators, in adding bits to legislation, mark those bits as their own by helping their own
districts. Well, certain people within their own districts. You know, spending on indoor
jungles, bike paths, and raisin research.
Ready
remedy for earmarks? If earmarks are to be truly solved, rather than
simply lamented, they need to be scrutinized, challenged and removed before reaching
the president's desk. Does such a solution exist? Not only is there one,
but it has a proven track record in the Senate.
Pork
endangered: Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn may force their colleagues to make
an up-or-down public decision on proposals such as tucking $2 million for a public park in
San Francisco into the nation's massive military spending bill. Last Dec. 20, this bit of
pork was passed by Congress without debate and without a vote in the final version of the Defense
Appropriations Act.
Congress Goes on a Spending
Binge. Congress just passed and President George W. Bush just signed a
highway bill that will spend $286 billion over six years on roads and bridges,
rail and bus facilities, bike paths and recreational trails. The president says
the projects will create jobs. That is baloney. Employing people to build
roads doesn't add jobs. The money spent on roads would have been spent on
something else. That something else also would have employed people.
Pork-for-Relief
Swap: When Hurricane Katrina wiped out the City of New Orleans, Congress jumped in and
did what Congress does best: Spend money like drunken sailors with no regard for the fiscal
consequences. … You'd think a Republican-controlled Congress might show a little fiscal
discipline and cut out some "frills" to cover this unexpected major expense. And
you'd be wrong.
Getting a bit
carried away? Keep in mind that $100 billion is one-eighteenth of the federal
government's whole operating budget this year. It is what we have been spending each
year on the entire Iraqi war effort. It is roughly twice as much as America spends
each year to operate all its colleges and universities. It is more than the total
passenger revenue of all the major airlines in the United States. This year. It
is a staggeringly huge amount of money.
Let's be
responsible. The importance of personal responsibility is taught everyday in American
classrooms, churches and at dinner tables and ball fields — everywhere, it seems, but Washington,
DC. There, in the shadows of monuments to Washington and Lincoln, responsibility needs to be
reinvigorated by politicians who seem to be more intent on lavishing taxpayer dollars on special interest
groups than providing for a safe and prosperous American future.
Republican
'Porkers' Urged to Stop Spending. "The pork has exploded," Chris Edwards, director of
tax policy for the Cato Institute declared, pointing the finger at Republicans and Democrats in
government for the increase in pet projects using American taxpayer money.
Big spender
Bush runs out of credit with conservative allies. The federal budget has
gone up by a third to $2.47 trillion since he came to power. This summer's $286 billion
Transportation Bill was an exercise in indulgence, including 6,371 special favors, known as "pork" and
worth $24 billion. A surplus has turned into a record deficit.
Storm's
Costs Threaten Hill Leaders' Pet Projects. As Congress looks for budget cuts to pay for
damage from Hurricane Katrina, lawmakers are facing the fact that many projects on the chopping block
are dear to their constituents.
Translation: The
Congressmen are dear to their constituents because of all the
pork projects they bring home.
The Democrats'
Byrd strategy: To those Americans who follow politics, [Senator Robert] Byrd's pork-barreling
feats are legend. The veteran charlatan has pilfered taxpayers nationwide of billions to place his name
on dozens of highways, government programs and public buildings in West Virginia. While taxpayers despise
Byrd, his pork-barreling actually earns him kudos from much of the mainstream press.
From the KKK to 48 years
in the Senate. In West Virginia, Senator Byrd is a living legend. He has channelled so much
federal money into his home state that it seems there is hardly a highway, bridge or government building in
West Virginia that is not named after him.
West Virginia Weighs Record Term for
Byrd. Leaning on two canes, Sen. Robert C. Byrd hardly looks like a billion-dollar
industry — or "Big Daddy," as the 88-year-old Democrat calls himself. No matter: Voters
once again are looking beyond Byrd's age to his political guile — and the truckloads of federal
dollars he's steered to West Virginia — as they consider whether to give him a record ninth term
in the Senate.
Is Pork Barrel Spending Ready to
Explode? The lobbyist is proposing to sell something that is not really his to
sell. That he believes he can deliver it tells us that something is terribly wrong in
Congress. It is one thing for members of Congress to make pork-barrel spending promises
to their constituents and deliver on them, but it is quite another that earmarks can be bought
and sold like bushels of wheat on the open market by private speculators.
Shocking New Pork Barrel
Spending! One [amendment] by Senator Conrad Burns (R-MO) would bail out farmers even
MORE to a tune of $2.4 billion (this is on top of the $180 billion Farm Bill that was
recently signed into law). Another would further increase HIV/AIDS funding overseas by
$600 million. What is even more maddening about this profligate spending is the
fact that we are only days away from starting the annual appropriations process, which becomes
an annual pork fest in its own right.
Book review Plowshares & Pork Barrels: The
Political Economy of Agriculture. Established in 1860, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has
grown without cease and is now the most entrenched of all federal agencies. The Farm Bills signed by
Presidents Bill Clinton in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2002 only served to further expand this byzantine
system.
Take the Federal Out of Farming.
Here's how the American free enterprise system works. You have an idea for a business. You
find the money to start it up. You try to give customers something they want at a price low enough
to keep them happy but high enough to earn a profit. Either your plan works, allowing you to make
a living, or it doesn't, indicating you should find a different line of work. Unless, of course,
you are a farmer, in which case all this may sound unfamiliar.
Congress
Punts, Public Sacked. Another winter has come in Washington and brought
with it another pork-laden omnibus spending bill. That's right. Thanks to
Congress's continued inability to do its job, taxpayers are once again left holding
the bag as billions of our hard-earned dollars are wasted.
Highway-to-nowhere
bill. In a Statement of Administrative Position, President Bush in March opposed
the myriad set-asides and so-called "high-priority" projects that litter the legislation, have
little to do with building and refitting critical highway infrastructure and are inserted for
political pork. Bicycle paths, covered bridge restoration and programs designed to encourage
people to walk to work are just a few examples of pork, and there are many, many more.
Highways to
Porkville. A lot of those billboards posted at public construction sites
that say "Your Tax Dollars At Work" need to be replaced with signs that read "Wasting
Your Money." This is the sad but inescapable conclusion after thumbing through the
2,000-plus pages of the $286 billion transportation bill that President Bush signed
[recently] — legislation that Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona correctly
called "a monstrosity" stuffed with outrageous, waste-ridden pork barrel projects that often
have nothing to do with roads.
Passing
up highway pork. Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, was one of only eight House
members to vote against the $286.4 billion highway and mass-transit bill, a pork-bloated law that
passed with bipartisan gusto on July 29 in the House, 412-8, and in the Senate, 91-4.
Under Bush, Federal
Spending Increases at Fastest Rate in 30 Years. President George W. Bush [became] the
first full-term president since John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) to not veto a single bill. The
result is a congress that has been completely unconstrained in satiating its appetite for pork
and corporate welfare.
From Wartime Expedient to
Permanent Pork Barrel: WFC to RFC to SBA. Jesse H. Jones, the Texas wheeler-dealer
who became the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's chairman in May 1933 and remained in charge of it
until March 1945, observed that the RFC "grew to be America's largest corporation and the world's
biggest and most varied banking organization." … Jones was not just huffing and
puffing: $50 billion dollars was a gargantuan amount of money to dole out. Small
wonder that he was widely regarded as the second-most-powerful man in the government.
Line-Item
Veto Can Cut Pork. U.S. taxpayers deserve to have Congress justify how it spends
their money. This is the simple idea behind giving the president a modified, constitutional
version of the line-item veto. By shining the light of day on budgeting in Washington and
holding members of Congress accountable for spending they insert into legislation, we can reduce
wasteful pork-barrel spending.
On the other hand... A Spending Eraser is at
Hand. Neither Congress need act nor the president wait if they decided to use the
power already provided by the Budget Act's authority to rescind funds. This law gives the
president the ability to single out spending items for repeal and Congress an expedited way to
do so by simple majority vote. While perhaps not as theoretically potent as a line-item
veto, rescission has several advantages. It has worked, it is surgical and it would
avoid the adversarial nature of the line-item veto.
Book review: Plowshares and
Pork Barrels. Established in 1860, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has
grown without cease and is now the most entrenched of all federal agencies. … Economists
are nearly unanimous in their denunciation of this wasteful and pernicious web of
politics. Subsidies for not growing crops are so notorious that they have been
the object of biting political satire since their introduction in the 1930s. However,
few books have critically analyzed government farm programs in their entirety.
Discretionary,
mandatory and unconstitutional spending. Several sections of the Constitution
expressly grant Congress the authority to tax and spend money to establish military forces
to defend the nation against its enemies. Not one says anything about buying drugs for
retired people.
Base closing
gripes. It's officially called the Department of Defense, but to many politicians,
the label misstates its function. Judging from their reaction to proposed base closures,
they'd like to rename it the Department of Jobs, Pork, Community Uplift and Incumbent
Protection. That way, no one would get distracted by the petty business of protecting
America.
The
Oppenheimer-opera-documentary grant: The 1965 law that created the NEA
was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. It
says nothing about the Constitution. But it does claim it "is necessary and appropriate
for the Federal government to compliment, assist and add to programs for the advancement of the
humanities and the arts by local, state, regional, and private agencies and their
organizations." That means it is "necessary" for your family to be taxed so
federal bureaucrats can give your money to the Iris Feminist Collective. Our
constitutional republic flourished for 176 years before liberal Democrats
discovered this "necessity."
Congress
Approves $800 Billion Increase in Debt Ceiling. The U.S. Congress approved an
$800 billion increase in the nation's $7.384 trillion debt limit, the third increase
in the government's borrowing limit since President George W. Bush came to office.
Mr.
Appearance of Corruption: Meet Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who spent the
last 36 years in the U.S. Senate. He's chairman of the powerful Senate
Appropriations Committee, where all our dough gets doled out. In 2002, his campaign
spent $2.8 million against an opponent that spent $893 and some-odd cents. In 1996,
he had no major party opposition at all, but spent $2.7 million to run for reelection.
Red Light on Highway Pork:
Local road projects seem to top most members' agendas, and money is no object. The House bill would cost
$283 billion over six years, almost $50 billion more than what the government is scheduled to
collect in gas taxes in that period. Worse, it's loaded with more than 3,000 "earmarks" totaling
$10.7 billion.
Federal Spending Creates
Few Jobs, Less Value. During the recent debate on legislation to reauthorize
the federal highway system, many supporters of the program claimed that it would create
two million jobs. But as decades of research demonstrate, such claims are
questionable….
Same story — Highways and
Jobs: The uneven record of federal spending and job creation.
Congress
Passes $373 Billion Spending Bill. The measure has 7,932 so-called
earmarks, for local items such as museum upgrades and agricultural research,
costing $10.7 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that
pushes for lower spending.
Why Can't Congress
Stop Spending? Everybody complains about pork, but members of Congress
keep spending because voters do not throw them out of office for doing so. The
rotten system in Congress will change only when the American people change their beliefs
about the proper role of government in our society. Too many members of Congress
believe they can solve all economic problems, cure all social ills, and bring about
worldwide peace and prosperity simply by creating new federal programs. We must
reject unlimited government and reassert the constitutional rule of law if we hope to
halt the spending orgy.
A Threat
Greater than Terrorism: Even though many in Washington pledged themselves to
fiscal responsibility, federal spending has been skyrocketing in recent years. At $20,000
per household, federal spending is at its highest levels since World War II.
Our
misspent tax dollars: Why must taxpayers shell out $100,000 to renovate
an historic Coca-Cola building in Macon, Ga., when the soft drink company made
millions last year and could fund the project itself?
Welfare Turns
Into a Suite Deal: The Bush administration and the Republican-led House
have taken steps toward providing an unprecedented taxpayer-funded handout to private
companies. The energy bill, which passed the House and will be taken up again by
the Senate in January, contains nearly $30 billion in such benefits, including
$11.3 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies that just had one of their
most profitable years on record.
The issue that
won't go away. Stephen Slivinski blasts the big spending Republican Congress and points to what
he calls "the curse of incumbency." A curse, he says, that "can be measured in dollar terms."
Slivinski recites chapter and verse of numerous studies of congressional behavior all demonstrating that
politicians vote for evermore spending the longer they stay in office. The answer, according to
Slivinski, is obvious: term limits.
Money to Burn: Take the case
of Iowa Senator Charles Grassley. He's served in Congress for 30 years. According to opponents
of term limits, this means he possesses valuable wisdom that we simply can't replace. And yet he wants
to build a rain forest in Iowa.
Shocking New Pork Barrel
Spending! It appears that even after a stern warning from President Bush and the immense pressure
of looming deficits, that lawmakers STILL can't keep their fingers out of the cookie jar.
Conservative groups break with
Republican leadership: National leaders of six conservative organizations yesterday [1/15/2004]
broke with the Republican majorities in the House and Senate, accusing them of spending like "drunken sailors,"
and had some strong words for President Bush as well.
The
party of big spenders: Once upon a time a Republican candidate for
president named George W. Bush painted his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, as a reckless
big spender whose fiscal policies would mean that "the era of big government being over
is over." So where do things stand three years later?
The embarrassing GOP:
This Republican Congress, in addition to increasing spending on entitlements and expanding big
government - like the Democrats they once criticized - also dished out $95 billion in tax breaks
and pork-barrel projects.
Do the Republicans have the courage to roll back federal
spending? Half of all Americans now receive some form of entitlement, whether Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, unemployment insurance, veterans benefits, federal
pensions, food stamps, school lunches, the earned-income tax credit, farm subsidies, or disability
payments. Entitlements consume more than half of the $1.5-trillion budget.
Washington's $782 Billion Spending Spree:
Politicians who want to spend even more money are telling taxpayers that it's time to sacrifice. To which
taxpayers should reply: "You first."
Congress
Accused of Wasting Money as Deficit Mounts: The energy bill, economic stimulus package and farm
bill are all examples of congressional spending gone wild, according to a study released by the watchdog group
Taxpayers for Common Sense.
A Long Hot Summer:
History has shown that short deadlines and election-year pressures always lead to "compromises" that grow the
size and scope of government.
New
Awards For Republicans in Name Only: They're called RINOs - Republicans
in Name Only, and now, they've even got their own awards, dubious to be sure, handed
out by the anti-tax Washington group, Club For Growth. Club For Growth
President Stephen Moore said the RINO awards recognize certain Republican office
holders around the nation who have advanced what he called "anti-growth, anti-freedom
or anti-free market policies."
Tom Daschle's Scam to Help Swindle
Taxpayers: Pork-barrel spending through the Agriculture Department can be discovered and exposed
through the use of the Freedom of Information Act. But that could change if Senator Tom Daschle, D-S.D.,
gets his way.
If Pork Had Wings: Word has it that
congressional offices are creating lists of lobbyists and corporations who have come knocking to use the
Sept. 11 tragedies to cash in for their own narrow benefit. Such profiteering is troubling, of
course, and in this case achieves the amazing feat of setting a new low in the Washington world of brazen
corporate welfare.
Welfare State Continues to Grow: When
President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty more than 30 years ago, he announced it was an
investment that would repay its cost to society many times over. Since that time, the United States
has "invested" $7.95 trillion (in constant 1999 dollars) in programs that provide cash,
food, housing, and medical and social services to poor and low-income Americans. By contrast, the cost
to the United States of fighting World War II was $3.2 trillion (also in
1999 dollars). The cost of the War on Poverty has been more than twice the price tag for
defeating Germany and Japan in World War II, after adjusting for inflation.
Ten Thousand Commandments: In the new fiscal year
2002 federal budget, President George W. Bush proposed $1.96 trillion in spending. While
these costs encompass the on-budget scope of the federal government, there is considerably more to the
government's reach. Federal environmental, safety and health, and economic regulations cost hundreds of
billions of dollars every year on top of official federal outlays.
The
Welfare State on Autopilot Through Current Services Budgeting: An 11-page expose of the federal
budget process, where spending is compared to an inflated current services budget, rather than to last year's
spending. This is how a 4.5% spending increase over the previous year can be characterized
as a "draconian cut."
The
Department of Embezzlement: The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs
issued a report, "Government at the Brink," detailing billions of dollars in government
waste, loss, and fraud. It's a measure of the Clinton-Gore legacy - an Executive
Branch with core management problems. The Big Three TV networks and the New York Times
ignored it. With the Democratic coup, Joe Lieberman now heads the Committee,
and it's back to politics as usual.
Conservatives
Mark "Cost Of Government Day": Several conservative groups proclaimed July 6 as the day at
which Americans have earned enough gross income to gain "independence" from having to for the cost of federal,
state and local government.
(This chart appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 14, 2001.)
Kennedy Exploits Campaign Law Loophole: The loophole allows
politicians to accept flights aboard private and corporate jets, which could run more
than $3,000 an hour, as long as they pay what a first-class commercial fare would cost.
Free Lunch: Title I's formula for determining
aid — and its recipe for fraud: The process to qualify for a free lunch comes down
to parents self-reporting their income on a form that is turned in to their local school. Federal
free-lunch program administrators argue that the program has little potential for abuse because "the worst
that happens is a kid gets a free lunch." Federal free-lunch data, however, are used as one of the
main poverty indicators for school districts and are linked to many other local, state, and federal funding
streams. So any fraud in the free-lunch program is quickly multiplied.
Recommended Reading:
"Not
Yours to Give", an excerpt
from The Life of Colonel David Crockett, compiled by
Edward S. Ellis (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1884).
Editor's Note: Use your favorite internet search engine and search for
the phrase "risk losing federal funds", as in "states (or schools) that
do not comply would risk losing federal funds". You'll be surprised at the number of
times this phrase pops up in news stories, because the federal government is taking
money out of your paycheck and using it to buy back the Tenth Amendment from the
fifty states. Surprisingly many people believe that federally funded
projects cost nothing. But there are no "federal funds" except the money
that has been taken from the taxpayers. So when
you "risk losing federal funds",
you only risk lower taxes and smaller government!
