Pork Barrel Spending Declines, Says Washington Watchdog Group
PORK
Keene Sentinel
Jessica Arriens
Boston University Washington News Service
3/7/07
WASHINGTON, March 7 —There are many different ways to enjoy pork. In Washington, lawmakers have devised their own way—pork-barrel spending. This year’s examples include $5 million for Army alcohol breath testers, nearly $1.7 million to improve the shelf life of vegetables and $1 million to fund a California telescope that searches for alien life.
“This is the Chinese year of the pig,” said Tom Schatz, president of the non-profit, non-partisan group Citizens Against Government Waste, which tracks pork-barrel spending from year to year. “But luckily for taxpayers it’s a much smaller pig.”
The group released its Congressional Pig Book—an annual compilation of all pork in the federal budget—at a press conference Wednesday.
The Pig Book defines pork as spending that meets at least one of seven criteria: requested by only one chamber of Congress, not specifically authorized, not competitively awarded, not requested by the President, greatly exceeds the President’s budget request not the subject of congressional hearings or serves only a local or special interest.
The 2007 Pig Book focused only on defense and homeland security spending. Appropriations bills for these two departments were the only ones Congress passed last year. Money for all other agencies and programs were included in an omnibus spending bill enacted this year after congressional leaders imposed a moratorium on earmarks.
Schatz credited the lesser amount of pork to the moratorium on earmarks, new rules in the House and Senate that require greater transparency when requesting earmarks and the fact that only the two appropriations bills were reviewed.
But Congress will soon begin considering the 2008 fiscal year budget, and that may once again increase pork-barrel spending.
“The House has rules, the Senate has a bill,” Schatz said. “But there are no permanent fixes to the earmark problem.”
The group identified 2,658 pork projects, and of those identified as benefiting a specific state, New Hampshire received 21. They range from $3.9 million for Marine Corps flight-line security acceleration to $1.3 million for a new Army combat helmet.
“There is no way we could undergo the research and development costs that are acquired on our own,” said Jay Lustig, a business developer and program manager at Scientific Solutions, a company located in Nashua that received $1.8 million to fund a marine mammal monitoring and protection system for the Navy. “It’s just too expensive.”
The program is basically a steel-encased sonar system, submerged under water to detect marine mammals and therefore protect them from potentially hazardous Navy tests or from colliding with ships. The company developed the system with help from Cornell University, then went to Congress and discussed funding.
“The New Hampshire Senate delegation was always very cautious about not taking on the full burden,” Lustig said, describing the money as an initial burst of funding.
Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., said in a statement that Scientific Solutions “allows the Navy to achieve its national security objectives while at the same time protecting wildlife such as marine mammals.”
Sununu is a member of the Senate Fiscal Watch Team, a group created in 2005 that focuses on reducing government spending, and said he remains “committed to shining a bright light on spending bills and dramatically reducing earmarks.”
“Special interest, big spending provisions that aren’t in the best interest of the taxpayers serve only to break the budget and increase the deficit,” he said.
“I understand where these people are coming from,” Lustig said of Citizens Against Government Waste. “But it’s just kind of frustrating when you’ve dedicated so many years developing a good system that works. You know, it’s not the way we run our business, it’s just research that a small company could not afford to do on our own.”
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