Porky Park: Bringing home the bacon

When it comes to “pork barrel” spending, the usual rule of thumb goes like this: If it’s for your district, it’s pork. If it’s for mine, it’s a vital public project. As the Enquirer’s Malia Rulon reported Friday, Greater Cincinnati members of the U.S. House are split over this month’s passage of the $7.62 billion Water Resources Development Act, which included $25 million for a new riverfront park downtown, fronting the proposed Banks development. Reps. Jean Schmidt of Miami Township and Geoff Davis of Hebron, voted for the bill, while Rep. Steve Chabot of Westwood, and House Minority Leader John Boehner of West Chester opposed it because of what they saw as the legislation’s wasteful spending overall.

The story posed this question: Is the park pork? Probably none of these four House members would call it that, but they’d certainly admit it’s an “earmark.” That’s not necessarily the same thing. Earmarking is a legitimate constitutional function of Congress – appropriating specific funds for specific purposes, as opposed to a lump sum for a federal agency to carry out projects and operations.

Earmarking can be an efficient way to get projects done without many of the bureaucratic hassles. But Congress perverted the process into one in which such items are slipped into large spending bills anonymously, with no accountability or oversight, often literally at the last minute. They often can’t be debated, modified or weeded out. They’re used to reward friends, buy support, stroke lawmakers’ egos, even function as bribes. They encourage corruption, and they balloon federal spending ­– to the tune of $29 billion in fiscal 2006, according to Citizens Against Government Waste. In a word, they become pork – like Alaska’s famous $223 million “Bridge to Nowhere.” Republicans controlling Congress indulged in an orgy of such spending during the past few years.

Democrats vowed to rein in, if not eliminate, earmarks when they took over this year. Well, it looks like the rein hasn’t fallen yet. As the New York Times reported last month, the leadership simply re-defined the House rules to remove the use of the term “earmark.” But they’re still there. Much of the supposed earmarking "reform" is a carefully crafted illusion. The $124 billion war spending bill Congress just passed is $20 billion more than needed. Much of the excess is pure pork – a $25 million subsidy for spinach growers in California, for example – larded in there as incentives for certain members of Congress to go along with the measure’s Oct. 1 deadline for withdrawal from Iraq.

So is the riverfont earmark a $25 million “Park to Nowhere”? You can always argue that a project is somehow good for local economy. But often it’s a leap to conclude that Washington should be bankrolling it instead of private, local, state or other sources. A half a million for a teacup museum here, $250,000 for asparagus technology research there, and pretty soon, as the great Everett Dirksen would put it, you’re talking real money.

I’d suggest a three-part test for “pork”:
1. Is it something that should be funded by government at all, much less the federal government?
2. Is the project being funded on its own merits, or for political reasons?
3. Is the money allocated in an above-board, transparent process open to public debate?

Seems to me our local “water resources development” project doesn’t pass this test. I’d like to see park there as much as anybody, but this legislation is not the way to do it. Boehner and Chabot won’t say it, but I will: The park is pork.
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