Earmarks

The incoming Congress plans a Mike Tyson on pork

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
12/14/06
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/earmarks.htm

The Republicans left a mess for the Democrats. Well, actually, they left a huge mess for everyone, a mess that will take America decades to clean up, if it can be cleaned up.

This particular portion of that mess, however, was legislative. The Republicans passed on their duty to enact a budget for Fiscal Year 2007 (the job was supposed to have been completed October 1st) and left it, deliberately, for the incoming Democratic Congress to tackle.

There was a rationale behind all this. It was one monumental task that the Democrats would have to address right away, and this would prevent them from “hitting the ground running” with the dozens of reforms and changes they wanted to implement as soon as possible in order to convince the public that they weren’t just playing Republican lite, corruption with a smile instead of a snarl. “Meet the new boss same as the old boss.”

There was also the fact that the proposed spending bills (the Republicans left 11 of the 13 bills that, in all, comprise the federal budget) were laced with thousands of earmarks, provisions slipped in by members for federal funding for pet projects, usually in their own districts. These, rightly or wrongly, are usually known as “pork.” The Democrats would either have to go through all those earmarks, provision by provision (the equivalent of grooming the Amazon jungle with a flea comb), or have the Republicans crow that pork was five times worse in 2007 under the Democrats than it was in 1994, the last year the Democrats controlled Congress. They wouldn’t bother to mention that ALL of that growth occurred during the previous six Congresses, all Republican, or that the Democrats were struggling with unfinished business brought about by GOP dereliction. It’s one thing to say that as a class, most politicians are hypocrites. The GOP took hypocrisy and made it party policy.

But then, yesterday, the Democratic leadership dropped a bomb. They announced that the 11 bills would be lumped into one, stripped of all earmarks, and then considered on a straight up-and-down vote.

According to AP political writer Andrew Taylor, the earmarks, in all, make up about $463 billion. That’s a fair chunk of change. It’s enough to cover the deficit for 2007, including the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations.

It’s a master stroke. It leaves Republicans in the position of trying to figure out how to scream, “they stole our pork!” without actually saying “they stole our pork!” It frees up the Democratic Leadership to push for legislative reform agendas addressing medicare, education, Iraq, and dozens of other issues.

But there is a big problem for the Democrats. People, as mentioned, think of earmarks as pork, such as the famous Alaskan bridge-to-nowhere.

Many, and perhaps most of those earmarks, are not pork. Many are justified and useful. Some are vital – funding for infrastructure repair, medical reimbursements to strapped counties trying to cover medicare shortfalls, and so on. And some, while perhaps not justified, are popular. For a lot of politicians, “popular” and “justified” are synonyms.

A few years back, someone on Usenet posted a list of 30 “pork projects.” I got curious and researched them. Of the twenty or so where I could glean enough information to form an opinion, about half seemed worthwhile. Subsequent email responses from readers convinced me that a couple that I had no opinion on were also vital. (In one of my less-than-stellar moments, I made reference to “the late Republican Senator, William Proxmire.” At least I spelled the man’s name right. One out of three isn’t so bad, is it? He’s still quite alive, albeit long retired from public life, and of course, he was a Democrat. Ouch.)

So what the Democratic leadership is proposing to do is throw quite a few babies out with quite a lot of bathwater. There will be a hue. There will be a cry. And it will come from all parts of the political spectrum, with the exception of the fruitcake “drown government in the bathtub” libertarians.

It will be justified.

The Democrats are taking a huge risk. It’s the sort of draconian “train wreck” approach to governance that Newt Gingrich tried in 1995 with his tactics of trying to blackmail the administration into accepting his vision of how America should be financed, all or none.

Where Newt blew it – and neutralized his future effectiveness in future budget battles – was in his intransigence. He wasn’t bluffing or bartering. He not only threatened to shut down government, but he did it. And it blew up in his face. The public was outraged.

The Dems, for similar reasons, are bluffing. They can’t afford the political fallout that such a draconian approach will entail. But they have put the Republicans in a position where they are going to have to agree to some things in order to get the earmarks.

What might those things be?

At a guess, I would say that the Democrats are quietly demanding the following from the Republicans: that they be allowed to do all eleven bills in one in order to ensure quick passage, so as to permit the Dems to proceed with their own agenda. Second, to get the Republicans to agree that they will not try to get political traction out of the fact that a legacy bill with earmarks was passed by the reform-minded Dems. Third, that the Republicans agree to good faith efforts to greatly reduce the practice of earmarking on future budgets.

If I were a part of the Democratic contingent, that is the very least I would want. And I would waste no time reminding Republicans that lack of cooperation now would mean considerable difficulty in Republicans getting their pork next year. Democrats don’t need to be as unilaterally overbearing as Republicans proved to be over the past 12 years – they do want to restore democracy to Congress, after all – but it won’t hurt to remind the GOP that the majority has the greater power. Like dogs, the GOP needs caring discipline.

The balance of the Senate is in doubt today as a result of Senator Tim Johnson’s cerebrovascular accident. We all wish the Senator the best and a speedy recovery.

However, budget deliberations are the province of the House, and none of the elements in this essay are affected by the events in Johnson’s life.