The crusade against pork-barrel spending has come a long way
since the Bridge to Nowhere. Now a moratorium on earmarks —
congressional funds dispensed for specific projects — has become
a top priority of conservatives
inside and
outside of Congress.
John McCain in particular has built his reputation for fiscal
conservatism on cutting earmarks. If elected, he promises to end
pork in our time. Even the Democrats are getting into the act,
lamenting that all the money spent on bear
DNA mapping could have been used to expand public assistance
to the poor.
When both parties are engaged in a massive spending bidding war
— Bill Clinton’s reports of the death of big government were
greatly exaggerated — it’s tempting to cheer on even the most
modest budget cuts. But in setting their sights on pork, those
dedicated to a smaller, more efficient government are aiming at
the wrong target.
To put things in perspective, the combined cost of every single
earmark identified
in Citizens Against Government Waste’s 2008 Pig Book was
$17.2 billion. That’s real money, but it is also less than 1
percent of a $2.77 trillion budget.
Worse, eliminating all these earmarks wouldn’t have necessarily
cut any spending. The money would just be handed out by someone
other than Congress. In other words, they’ll still have your tax
dollars but your congressman won’t be able to get any of it back.
IF CONSERVATIVES ARE are serious about cutting spending and
members of Congress are equally committed to bringing home the
bacon, consider this modest proposal: Give them their earmarks in
exchange for slashing everything else.
Members of Congress would get to fund their lobster institute or
favorite salmon fishery. Conservatives could focus on the other
99 percent of spending, where the real savings can be found.
Didn’t Barry Goldwater tell us to go hunting where the ducks are?
Sure, it would be better if taxpayers in Anchorage paid for their
own bridges rather than foisting the bill on some unsuspecting
family in Peoria or another congressional district with less
seasoned representation. But politics is the art of the possible.
No matter where a bridge goes, it doesn’t cost anywhere nearly as
much as an entitlement program.
The earmark benefiting the First Tee program, which seeks to
“promote character development and life-enhancing values through
the game of golf,” is probably the most benign form of social
engineering coming out of Washington.
Entitlements saddle our descendants with costs they never chose
to take on and “benefits” they may not really want — and, in the
case of Social Security, may never even get. Pork, however, has
none of these drawbacks. A teapot museum is something concrete,
constructed in the here and now. Its costs probably won’t
mushroom beyond original projections, as have Medicare’s.
Other pork projects provide tangible benefits without distorting
free markets or creating perverse economic incentives. Think of
the Montana Sheep Institute, for example — a steal at just
$148,950. Government-funded bicycle trails undoubtedly make life
better for families and communities, as well as other living
things, and at just a fraction of the $92 billion
we spend on corporate welfare.
Every abuse of pork-barrel spending is out in the open while
other programs seem to have invisible price tags. Hillary
Clinton’s Woodstock museum or the Larry Craig Memorial Rest Stop
can easily be torn down. Entitlements, like diamonds, are
forever.
FISCAL CONSERVATIVES could spend their time going after
Congressman Walter Jones for the $147,000 he requested to build
the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, North Carolina.
Or they could concentrate on pricier boondoggles like the
prescription drug benefit, which added $12 trillion to Medicare’s
unfunded liabilities — and which Jones voted against. (Though
Jones’s critics may be less concerned about earmarks than with
some other
spending he’d like to cut.)
A few objections to a government of pork are easy to anticipate.
Doesn’t Washington, D.C. have better things to do than conduct
olive fruit fly research in France or build the Charles B. Rangel
Center for Public Service?
The equally obvious answer: Probably not. We can fund a $5
trillion war on poverty, which poverty seems to have won, and
then
export the Great Society to the Middle East. Or we can spend
$196,000 to renovate a historic Las Vegas post office, in a red
state where it might do some good.
The $460,752 earmarked last year for hops research could produce
better beer, helping people to forget about all the other
spending that would be cut in an earmarks-for-entitlements trade.
It’s true that this expenditure isn’t directly authorized by the
Constitution, but it’s probably covered under the Declaration of
Independence’s provision regarding the pursuit of happiness. Can
you think of any non-pork social program that offers such a great
return on the taxpayer’s investment?
If pork is really the main desire of congressmen and their
constituents, let’s give them what they want — and very little
else.
