In praise of pork - pork barrel spending

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

ments to individuals fell from $53.7 billion in 1980 to $30.1

billion in 1991, a decline of 44 percent.

These trends are hard to square with the claims of those who insist that legislators are focusing most of their energies on pork barrel activities. In fact, according to R. Douglas Arnold, a Princeton University political scientist and one of the first researchers to investigate the matter empirically, if anything the impact of pork on federal spending "seems to be diminishing."

Other budget experts agree. "The role of pork in the budget has declined," said John L. Palmer, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, in a widely noted 1988 Washington Post article. "It just isn't a significant budget item--if it ever was." While the drop in pork barrel spending has not been precisely quantified, Charles Schultze, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, in 1988 estimated the amount of pork in the budget at "no more than $10 billion." This works out to less than 1 percent of federal outlays that year and about 6.3 percent of domestic discretionary spending.

What caused the pork barrel to shrink? While numerous factors played a contributing role--including changes in the law requiring localities benefiting from water projects to shoulder a significant share of the cost--by far the most important was the pressure Congress felt from Ronald Reagan to reduce domestic spending. Legislators are rarely happy to limit their ability to feed at the political trough, of course. But as Arnold points out in The Logic of Congressional Action, the only alternative was to cut middle-class entitlements like Social Security--something Congress was not yet prepared to do. Writes Arnold, "In times of fiscal austerity, when legislators must cut something, it is less risky to reduce future opportunities for credit claiming than it is to be associated with terminating constituents' regular supply [of benefits!."

Controlling entitlements

The fact that entitlements involve a regular supply of benefits explains why controlling these programs is essential to reducing the deficit. Imagine there are just two government programs, both funded at $5 billion a year. One is a classic pork program--it funds the construction of public works in individual districts. The other is an entitlement--it provides a monthly check to disabled federal workers. Each year the amount of the check is adjusted for inflation. Assume as well that legislators do not care about what is "good" public policy; they are interested only in their reelection. If voters are constantly asking--"What have you done for me lately?"--what must legislators do to increase their chances of remaining in office?

In the case of the public works program, each year's spending will lead to the construction of new buildings, highways, and so forth, and the legislator will get credit for each new project that is built in his district. If the $5 billion finances one hundred projects this year, it creates one hundred credit-claiming opportunities. Next year's $5 billion appropriation leads to one hundred more opportunities for receiving electoral credit. Pork, then, results in a continual stream of credit-claiming opportunities without a need to raise the level of spending. In tough economic times, legislators can simply cut back the number or size of projects funded. Since curtailing programs that provide one-time construction grants imposes costs primarily on future beneficia-ries, the risk of electoral retribution is likely to be small. In terms of long-term fiscal restraint, pork is thus a highly controllable source of spending.