In praise of pork - pork barrel spending

Public Interest, Wntr, 1993 by John W. Ellwood, Eric M. Patashnik

IN A WHITE HOUSE address last March, President Bush challenged Congress to cut $5.7 billion of pork barrel projects to help reduce the deficit. Among the projects Bush proposed eliminating were such congressional favorites as funding for asparagus research, mink reproduction, and local parking garages. The examples he cited would be funny, said the President, "if the effect weren't so serious." Bush announced he would work with House Republicans to bring these items to a vote individually--a strategy designed to embarrass congressional Democrats before the November elections by forcing them to take public stands on scores of questionable programs.

But Bush never received the individual votes he wanted. What he got instead was a one-shot $8.2 billion omnibus spending-reduction package, passed by veto-proof margins in both the House and Senate. While the measure's budget reductions far exceeded the amount requested by the President, it left intact most of the specific programs that Bush had targeted for extinction. Moreover, the vast majority of the bill's spending cuts ($7.2 billion) came from defense programs. In an act of pork barrel revenge, the measure also eliminated approximately $2 million of special executive-branch research projects--a reminder to Bush that Congress does not take kindly to attacks on its ability to bring home the bacon.

Such episodes are a regular occurrence in Washington. Indeed, since the first Congress convened in 1789 and debated whether to build a lighthouse to protect the Chesapeake Bay, legislators of both parties have attempted to deliver federal funds back home for capital improvements and other projects, while presidents have tried to excise pork from the congressional diet. During his first one hundred days in office, for example, Jimmy Carter announced that he intended to terminate funding for some 320 water projects he said were wasteful and environmentally unsound. The only thing that came to an end, however, was the Carter honeymoon on Capitol Hill. Ronald Reagan vetoed spending for more than 120 special highway "demonstration" projects in 1987. When the override vote came, however, even top Republicans voted against the President in order to maintain the flow of funds to their districts.

Is pork necessary?

In recent years, public outrage over government waste has run high. Many observers see pork barrel spending not only as a symbol of an out-of-control Congress but as a leading cause of the nation's worsening budget deficit. To cite one prominent example, Washington Post editor Brian Kelly claims in his recent book, Adventures in Porkland: Why Washington Can't Stop Spending Your Money, that the 1992 federal budget alone contains $97 billion of pork projects so entirely without merit that they could be "lopped out" without affecting the "welfare of the nation."

Kelly's claims are surely overblown. For example, he includes the lower prices that consumers would pay if certain price supports were withdrawn, even though these savings (while certainly desirable) would for the most part not show up in the government's ledgers. Yet reductions in pork barrel spending have also been advocated by those who acknowledge that pork, properly measured, comprises only a tiny fraction of total federal outlays. For example, Kansas Democrat Jim Slattery, who led the battle in the House in 1991 against using $500,000 in federal funds to turn Lawrence Welk's birthplace into a shrine, told Common Cause Magazine, "it's important from the standpoint of restoring public confidence in Congress to show we are prepared to stop wasteful spending," even if the cuts are only symbolic. In a similar vein, a recent Newsweek cover story, while conceding that "cutting out the most extreme forms of pork wouldn't eliminate the federal deficit," emphasizes that doing so "would demonstrate that Washington has the political will to reform its profligate ways."

The premise of these statements is that the first thing anyone--whether an individual consumer or the United States government--trying to save money should cut out is the fluff. As Time magazine rhetorically asks: "when Congress is struggling without much success to reduce the federal budget deficit, the question naturally arises: is pork really necessary?"

Our answer is yes. We believe in pork not because every new dam or overpass deserves to be funded, nor because we consider pork an appropriate instrument of fiscal policy (there are more efficient ways of stimulating a $5 trillion economy). Rather, we think that pork, doled out strategically, can help to sweeten an otherwise unpalatable piece of legislation.

No bill tastes so bitter to the average member of Congress as one that raises taxes or cuts popular programs. Any credible deficit-reduction package will almost certainly have to do both. In exchange for an increase in pork barrel spending, however, members of Congress just might be willing to bite the bullet and make the politically difficult decisions that will be required if the federal deficit is ever to be brought under control.