Booze and Balloons or Body Armor and Bullets
The title of this post is taken from a speech by Republican Senator Tom Coburn given during debate on the current supplemental spending bills in the House and Senate for funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. You have likely heard about these bills due to the fact that both versions contain calls of varying strength for setting a clear date for a U.S. pullout from Iraq.
Both bills have now passed and must be combined into a single piece of legislation that will be sent to the Whitehouse where President Bush has stated clearly that he will veto anything with a pullout date. For what it’s worth, I think he’s got a point here, but that’s not the subject of my post.
The President asked for 100 billion and the Congress essentially said OK. But in the process, several fine members of the Legislative branch added about 20 billion extra in earmarks for domestic pet projects completely irrelevant to Iraq and Afghanistan. As stated by Congressman John Kyl, “Politicians have decided that this is a good train to get on board because it’s got to move.”
Coburn’s booze and bullets remark refers to an earmark for 100 million to cover the security costs of the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions. Others include funding to fight bugs in the western states, 3.1 billion to help communities dealing with military base closures, 774 million for poor kids’ health programs, etc.
These earmarks come from both Democrats and Republicans and cover a huge variety of topics and needs. It’s not ALL for booze and balloons. Many of the programs attached to the war-spending bill likely SHOULD be funded.
But that still leave the question of what sort of legislative process produces this outcome? How and why must funding for completely irrelevant projects get tied up with something as large and important as war funding? This is a crazy way to do business that screams with the high probability of misuse and corruption.
The answer is that earmarks are how congressmen get elected. They bring home the pork, and the consequences be dammed. When it comes time to run for votes there are few more powerful arguments than standing in front of a school you got built or talking to people who have jobs at a company you lured to town with tax breaks. Pork works. Unless and until we as voters stop voting for pork, the folks we elect will keep serving it up any way they can.
We need our individual representatives to fight for our rights and needs on the national stage. That’s largely why we voted for them. But this process must become more open and clear. It can’t be about shoving funding in the back door. This is not a new idea, but it struck especially hard in the context of the “do anything for our troops” rhetoric currently all over Washington. I have no idea how to deal with the problem of Iraq, but a good place to start would be to exclude business-as-usual politics from the process.
Be brave. Be human.
April 4th, 2007 10:25
Hi Grant-
The riders tacked onto bills have always bothered me, but throwing political business-as-usual into this complex issue (again) is, to me, unconscionable.
Perhaps Congress could get more done if they stuck to one issue at a time and settled that, rather than trying to settle numerous things all at once. Perhaps not, but it’s worth a try.
Susan
April 4th, 2007 12:45
Hello Susan and Grant,
I couldn’t agree more with your comments. The pattern of attaching bills together has more to do with appearances back homefor the legislator than what the bills have to do with each other.
There is a proposal being forwarded that every bill and earmark must have an appended justification by the sponsoring legislator citing the benefit and reason for the spending.
I believe this type of “Sunshine” approach would do wonders in weight loss for the larding of spending bills.
Regards,
Denis
April 4th, 2007 18:52
Pendleton, OR is not only my hometown, but the hometown of Oregon’s Republican US Senator, Gordon Smith. In the last two years our city of 17,000 people have recieved almost $9million in pork courtesy of Mr. Smith.
$500,000 for bathrooms at the 100 year old Round-up Grounds. http://www.pendletonroundup.com
AND
$8 million for a connector from I-84 to our Airport in the hopes that SOMEDAY some industry MIGHT build up there.
http://www.eastoregonian.info/main.asp?SectionID=13&SubSectionID=48&ArticleID=48454
If your city has ever received pork from your congressmen, then you know how much it means to the voters of the community. It’s not good, but its what it takes to get reelected.
April 4th, 2007 19:11
John,
Welcome to the site. I must say I’m always troubled by the argument that pork is somehow necessary to get elected. With the numbers you state, the projects amount to a bit more than $500 dollars per person. Of course what really happens is that the projects benefit certain key contributors, who then donate to your Senator’s campaign. In essence, U.S. tax dollars are funneled to pork projects so that a portion can be skimmed off the top for campaigns.
So why not just fund all campaigns directly at fixed amounts, and cut out the middle man? What would be the problem with publicly funded elections?
April 6th, 2007 08:40
Grant,
Your comment, “This is a crazy way to do business”, sheds an interesting light on the problem. Most businesses that have a good governance over costs would never let this happen. Requests for projects or acquisitions of any size - even for buying a handful of desktop printers - require an appropriate level of review and approval. There is little or no opportunity to introduce pork through the back door.
I can’t speak for not-for-profits, so I don’t know if this type of manipulation of the system is possible there. I would tend to believe that, with strict regulations placed over most not-for-profits, that they wouldn’t allow this, either.
Susan,
I’d like to see legislation that rejects the addition of unrelated riders to bills. With two parties holding all the power, I see this as a difficult sell.
Brian,
I found myself having conflicting points about pork as I started writing this comment. Pork either works as a campaign tactic because money is a language everyone can understand, or it works because politicians only mention how much money was received versus how much was actually needed. Everyone understands the concept of money, so it’s easy to say “I brought back $50,000 to save the little kids’ playground”. People hear that the playground was saved; they don’t hear that it could have been saved for $5,000.
Until we can identify and communicate better measurements for evaluating our elected representatives’ effectiveness, we’re stuck with it. However, I do believe this is an effort worth pursuing.
Rick
April 6th, 2007 08:56
Hi Denis-
I haven’t heard about the proposal “that every bill and earmark must have an appended justification by the sponsoring legislator citing the benefit and reason for the spending.”
Do you have any more info about that? I find the idea intriguing.
Susan
April 6th, 2007 11:05
Hello all,
This is one issue where I believe the onus is really on us. John’s right (welcome, John). Pork buys votes. Until it no longer does, it will continue. The Sunshine idea that Dennis spoke of sounds interesting. I WANT my legislator to fight for my community, but I think it should be an open process. We need to communicate to legislators that burying funding for their constituents (us) in larger irrelevant legislation cannot continue.
Rick,
I chose the business analogy intentionally because I am minimally familar with the sorts of review processes you describe, and you’re right. It IS just about the only way to make this work.
Brian, campaign finance is another issue that makes me despair. How can any sort of democracy survive in a system where candidates must raise roughly 25 million dollars in about 3 months (Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama) to be considered competitive? Money of this magnitude can only be raised by selling your soul to the persons with the biggest checkbooks. Clinton and Obama are already bought and paid for and the election isn’t even close to beginning.
My vote seems more and more to be an exercise in futility.
-Grant