Pork Barrel Spending

Pork barrel spending is a bad thing, right? Everyone certainly agrees that it is and is causing a budget crisis in our nation. It is partially to be blamed for the budget deficient. But what everyone can not agree on is what it is. A project in your neck of the woods is certainly needed and worthwhile. But just look around in other regions of the country and you see this wasteful spending everywhere. Why can they control this unnecessary spending? If it makes no sense to you, read Robert Freer’s article below to get his prospective on the situation.

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

After finishing my last column on tax reform, I wrote to my editor, “So what would you like me to write about now?” That is the last time I will do that. He wrote back promptly: “… [W]hat process is required to change the public’s mindset when it comes to gov. [ernment] pork [?]… The public does not like big spending but they want their projects. How do we end this cycle and which politicians are even close to being honest about it?”

Gee, why not give me something simple like revealing the formula to turn lead into gold? Ending Pork that is a tall order. It is unlikely that the public can agree on its definition even if most voters say that, like smut, they know it when they see it! Does it make a difference what level of government is providing the assistance? Is money provided by local or state government less “pork like” than similar funds from the federal government? Is there such a thing as “good pork”?

Nearly everyone agrees that wasteful government is a bad thing; the trouble comes in determining what exactly constitutes waste. A pledge to cut government waste is an easy promise for candidates of either major party, but what is wasteful to a farmer in Nebraska is a godsend to a machinist in Chicago. Pork Barrel spending persists because political candidates use it as a tool to get RE-elected. No one has ever heard of the candidate who used it to get E-lected nor of the candidate who didn’t to get RE-elected. Without the equivalent of a BRAC Commission for waste, it will continue.

The success of the individual member of Congress in getting his/her share for their constituents is precisely measured and considered by opponents before calculating their ability to succeed in unseating an incumbent. There is even an index that shows which states as a whole collect more from the Federal government than their citizens pay in through taxes. Regularly those identified as most adept at keeping that a positive ratio for their state amass seniority and the power that comes with it. Pork has a long history in our republic, and we were hardly the first to experience the phenomenon. Clearly Roman senators curried favor with the citizens of Rome through similar excess state spending. One of the first noted examples in our history was introduced by our own John Calhoun who introduced the Bonus Bill of 1817 to construct highways from the East to the Western frontier using the earnings of the Second Bank of The United States. President Madison vetoed the bill as unconstitutional. Today in the era of 289 Billion Transportation proposals, Calhoun would be viewed as a piker….and not just a turn..piker.

Although we all have our favorite examples of pork barrel spending, there appears little will to combat it and many who would defend it. At the nation’s founding, Alexander Hamilton argued successfully that the federal government accept all the debt of the founding states to assure the credit worthiness of our currency and debt instruments. Though a worthwhile and brilliant move, it could be argued to have been just another form of pork. Hamilton believed that the carrying of a reasonable amount of debt by the national government bound the citizen to his country and wasn’t a bad thing. I suspect that even he would today be aghast at the level of debt of the country as an obligation of the single citizen. Over $5700 per man woman and child is the current figure and going up constantly.

Further states are increasingly forced to accept so called “federal mandates” that are not covered by sufficient federal dollars and further eviscerate the federal system envisioned by our Founders. To me that is the real sin of those that serve us. They are destroying the carefully calibrated balance between federal and local responsibility and losing the constantly renewing value of locally conceived solution to local problems that is essential to keep us vital as a republic. Using the Commerce clause as a tool, Congress has passed all sorts of obligations onto the states without appropriating adequate funds to carry out the burden they have imposed. It is way past time to do something about this.

If the federal government creates an obligation on the states, it should directly appropriate sufficient funds to carry out the requirements or the statute should be invalidated, and if you really want to stop “Pork”, we need a constitutional amendment limiting federal spending except during a nationally declared emergency to 15% of GNP. I suspect like the Korean war, we would end up with declared emergencies existing long after the condition that created the declaration, but at least such a requirement would be a small vestige of imposed restraint on an engine that is out of control regardless of who is at the switch in Washington.

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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