Pork Barrel Spending
...sy of the federal taxpayer.” The politicians do this in return for campaign contributions or votes, especially during election years. They deliver speeches about their concerns for the deficit and wasteful spending, while off-camera they boast about the pork that they are bringing home to their district or state. A $521 billion deficit and a $7.1 trillion national debt in fiscal 2004 are partly attributed to this hypocrisy. If earmarks had to be voted on independently from the bills they are attached to, they would suffer a quick demise; however, once they are attached to an appropriation bill, they are difficult to eliminate. Indeed, they are often buried in an appropriation bill that is frequently a thousand or more pages in length and most Congressional members will not vote down an important bill just to defeat some earmarks. Presently, the number of earmarks continues their explosive growth as the following data indicates. “ For fiscal 2004, appropriators inserted 10,656 earmarks in 13 appropriations bills, an increase over last year’s total of 9,362. In the last two years, the total number of projects has increased 28 percent. In contrast, there were only about 2,000 earmarks in all of the spending bills in 1998. The costs of the projects in fiscal 2004 is $22.9 billion, or 1.6 percent more than last year’s total of $22.5 billion,” according to Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization representing more than one million members and supporters nationwide. CAGW’s mission is to eliminate waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in the federal government. Furthermore, what one Congress member might view as an important earmark for his or her district or state, another member might view it as an unfair distribution of federal funds. According to Nickels, “It is also true that not all members of Congress are equally able to “bring home the bacon.” “Pork barrel benefits are not distributed based on a merit-based or national formula. Pork barrel funding is obtained through skillful political negotiations and advantageous committee assignments awarded to members who accrue both seniority and skill.” According to John Berlau, an investigative writer for Insight magazine, “The process is tilted toward members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. It is no coincidence that Alaska, home state of Senate Appropriations committee chairman Ted Stevens, a Republican, ranks third in the money it receives from the bill’s earmarks, although–next to Wyoming–it is the nation’s least-populated state.” In fiscal 2004 Alaska has earmarks totaling $524 million and leads the nation with $808 per capita; likewise, Hawaii represented by the number two Democrat on that committee, Senator Daniel Inouye, was the runner-up with $393 per capita and earmarks totaling $484 million. For example, some of the earmarks for Alaska were $200,000 for recreation improvement for the city of North Pole that has a population of only 1,646; similarly, the Alaskan statehood celebration received $450,000, and $6 million went to the special inte...