Because I am certain that virtually no Bowdoin student will be reading my column this weekend, down from the five that have typically muscled through columns past, I deliver to my non-student readership (my parents) a scorcher of a column on domestic spending policy. Read on.
The political firestorm of the week in Washington centers around a Senate appropriations bill, comprised of both a hurricane aid package and a fifth emergency defense funding request, that weighs in at a whopping $106 billion. President Bush, under pressure from fiscal conservatives in Congress, vowed Tuesday not to sign the bill in its current pork barrel-laden incarnation if the final price tag topped $92 billion, leaving senators to pare a hefty sum from the bill.
This is an important statement for both conservatives and the President, who is working to reassert his conservative roots, but not necessarily because it will strike a critical blow to their political opponents. In fact, quite the opposite is implied by efforts to curb superfluous spending.
Earmarking, the term given to the practice of surreptitiously adding one's "pet projects" to appropriations packages, has emerged in the past decade as one of the greatest detriments to the average American's perception of the federal government. On the other hand, earmarks are prerequisite objectives on any incumbent's road to reelection.
The paradox of the pork barrel is of epic proportions: Most Americans are highly critical of the practice when confronted with the staggering waste involved, and yet federal lawmakers have a hard time staying in Washington for more than one term if they can't "deliver" for their respective districts or states. Good representation no longer equates to an incumbent's ability to actually represent his or her constituents; rather, one's ability to bring money, no matter how unnecessary, to his area is the meter by which representatives are measured.
The problem in Congress today is by no means partisan; it is surprising that there are any critics of the latest appropriations bill at all. Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) argued in a February 9 op-ed for the New York Times that wasteful spending is not the only byproduct of earmarking and pork-barrel projects. Political discourse is significantly diluted when "Republicans and Democrats find common cause: protecting their pork."
Last year, there were more than 15,000 earmarks on appropriations?four times as many as in 1994; in fiscal year 2006, more than $64 billion went to earmarked projects. The number of earmarks is almost entirely proportional to the amount of valuable debate that isn't taking place, because as Flake puts it, "every member who got earmarks is obligated to vote for the entire [appropriations] bill."
Again, this endemic waste is by no means the responsibility of a single party; for example, in the current appropriations bill, Mississippi's Republican senators, Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, have earmarked $700 million to move a railroad line that has already been rebuilt in the wake of Katrina. This proposal has drawn specific scrutiny as the $250 million "railroad to nowhere," echoing the 2005 $223 million "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska which linked Ketchikan, a town of 14,000, to Gravina Island, which has a population of nearly 50.
On the other side of the aisle, Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton (D-NY both), longtime critics of the Iraq war and the failures in properly equipping our troops, have scored millions within defense appropriations to fund non-defense related research in their state (some of which was carried out by the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan). It is admirable to advocate that we better equip our troops, but less so to use dollars better spent on body armor instead on special interest research in New York City.
This bill may become a battleground of fiscal excess for two reasons. Critics of President Bush are increasingly wary of his spending and status as a proclaimed conservative; also, the bill's purpose as a hurricane relief package and source of funding for the war in Iraq will draw attention to the nearly $4 billion earmarked for agricultural subsidies and other non-defense and non-hurricane related spending.
Senate watchdogs led by John McCain (R-AZ) will make this as much of an issue as possible, decrying the methods with which lawmakers draw pork to their states. But is it realistic to expect change? What can McCain do as a senator, and what can we do as constituents, to effect change in the way our country is run?
Money is power, and vice versa, and that maxim rings true more so today than in decades past. Pork-barrel spending is a bipartisan issue if ever there has been such a thing. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are interested in functionally sacrificing their careers for what amounts to simply an ethical concern, especially when they are consistently rewarded with reelection for their efforts at bringing home the bacon.
There is little to support a positive outlook on this anathema in our Congress; the only cure might be legislative reforms in the ways bills are presented and considered. As long as congressmen are elected based on the money they can deliver, and not their representative prowess, there is little change to be found on the horizon.