Next to immigration policy, the major source of rank-and-file Republicans’ disenchantment with their party is pork barrel politics. The most visible symptom is the now notorious “earmark”, a Congressional directive to spend federal money on a particular local project: a highway, a bridge, a park, a bicycle path, a museum, a college dormitory or whatever. Many of these expenditures are worthy uses of somebody’s cash, but the traditional right-of-center view that the somebody should usually be closer to home. It’s appalling to learn that the number of earmarks has quadrupled since the GOP gained control of Congress 12 years ago. Deroy Murdock summarizes the complaints of the once-faithful:
On spending, LBJ’s Great Society seems greater than ever. Washington Republicans’ Spend-O-Rama famously included 13,997 pork-barrel projects that lodged like baby-back ribs in last year’s appropriations bills. President Bush’s $92.2 billion request for Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina funding has expanded to $109 billion after Senate manhandling. It now features such germane adornments as $6 million for Hawaiian sugar growers and $1.1 billion for private fisheries. Another $700 million would redirect train tracks that CSX Corp. invested $250 million to rebuild after Katrina; a replacement roadway then would link condos to Mississippi casinos.
Counterintuitively, the greatest growth in earmarks took place after Bill Clinton left office, as shown in this chart based on Congressional Research Office data:
These facts are well known. The conventional explanations are unsatisfactory. “Divided government” held down spending on programs that were disliked by either the President
A couple of anomalies also deserve attention. First, the number of earmarks has increased much more rapidly than the total amount expended on them. (I don’t know whether the chart above shows nominal or constant dollars; in either case, the average expenditure per earmark clearly is in sharp decline.) Second, the upswing coincides with a period during which Congressional elections, particularly in the House, have grown less and less competitive as a result of gerrymandering and restrictions on political speech. We think of pork as a way to buy votes, but why buy what one doesn’t need?
To account for these data, I’ve developed a new hypothesis (testing and verification to be left to others, unless my Representative earmarks a large research grant). It starts with the premise that legislators want to feel “successful” in their careers. In ordinary jobs, the tangible emblems of success are new assignments, promotions, pay raises and the like. Most of those are not available to any substantial degree to most members of Congress. Even repeated reelection is a watered down distinction, for nowadays it is routine.
All that remains for a self-respecting Congresscritter is legislative “achievements”. Unfortunately, leaving well enough alone is not generally regarded as an achievement. If one is going to spend most of one’s adult life in the legislative branch, one yearns for the glow of having legislated. Few take to heart Barry Goldwater’s wish to be remembered for the bills that he kept from passing.
For a small-government conservative, that poses a problem. It’s easy for a liberal to fashion a new geegaw for the welfare state as his legacy, but what do you do when you think the state is already too big? In that respect, the Congressional GOP has strayed from its principles less than Deroy Murdock et al. suppose. In 1995 non-defense spending totaled 17.0 percent of the gross domestic product. In 2005 the figure was 16.5 percent. Admittedly, that was up from 15.6 percent in 2001, but the rise is partly explained by the Clinton recession, which the Bush Administration had to clean up after, and homeland security needs. [Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table 461]
More significantly, although it has given more money to quite a few entitlement programs, the Republican Congress has added only one of any consequence: the Medicare drug prescription program. And that was, sad to say, a Bush campaign promise, which Republicans dragged their feet about enacting. Few, if any, regard it as proof of the worthiness of their tenure in office.
In the Clinton days, Republicans had the satisfaction of fighting a sleazy President and pushing through bills that he didn’t like – tax cuts, welfare reform and abortion restrictions – while resisting his sporadic left-wing initiatives. The election of a President of their own party took away those simple pleasures.
So what is left? Winning funding to rebuild a tunnel or expand an arboretum is a tangible accomplishment and offends conservative principles only mildly, especially if Rep. X looks only at his home district projects without attending to the totality of all the pork doled out to all 50 states and 535 districts. It would not be far from the truth to say that earmarks are a home remedy for low self-esteem – and arguably the least dangerous remedy in the Congressional medicine chest.
This theory accounts for various perplexing phenomena:
The number of earmarks has gone up since 2001, because other sources of pride in one’s work have (for Congressmen of conservative bent) dwindled or disappeared.
The average cost per earmark has declined, because more projects equals more “achievements”. Three one million dollar projects are worth more, from this perspective, than one for five million.
The lack of competitive races makes no difference, because the point of earmarks isn’t to win elections. It is to enable the barely contested winner to reassure himself that he is playing a valuable role in society, not just drawing a paycheck.
If my diagnosis of the disease is accurate, what can be done about it? There, I’m afraid, my stock of practicable ideas is scanty. On the not-too-practicable front, the need for legislative self-esteem would lessen if Congress were a temporary assignment rather than a career. But mandatory term limits require a Constitutional amendment, and voluntary ones merely lead to broken promises.
A restoration of competitive races might help, since winning reelection would then be satisfying in itself. (Note that the most famous Big Porkers, such as Senators Lott, Stevens and Byrd and Representatives Young and Lewis, hold extremely safe seats, while anti-earmark champion Tom Coburn squeaked into the Senate.) Another palliative would be to devise a way to compel members to reside in their districts, where they could bask in their status. (In D.C. almost all of them are minnows.) I wonder whether we could turn Congressional business over to e-mail and videoconferencing, eliminating the need to assemble in Washington except for ceremonial occasions. We are still, however, a long way from practicality.
The problem may, in the end, be insoluble, one of the inherent imperfections of a republican form of government. Well, if the choice is between quasi-socialists who revel in extending the reach of government and conservatives who fund bridges to nowhere, I know which is the lesser evil.
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