Pork Book Cites Wasted Government Spending
WASHINGTON, April 5 -Congress is flushing money down the drain, literally, according to the 2006 Pig Book released Wednesday by the Citizens Against Government Waste.
Surrounded by Winnie and Dudley, two pigs on leashes; Porky,someone in a full-body pig suit; and foam pigs and plastic snouts from the non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating wasteful spending, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., spoke out against pork barrel spending.
The annual report includes “oinkers of 2006,” awards for what the organization considers the most egregious spending. Some of the projects cited were $1 million for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative, $500,000 for the Sparta (N.C.) Teapot Museum and $100,000 for a boxing club in Henderson, Nev.
“Money taken from defense appropriations still remains the highest number and still the most outrageous because it diverts money from our national defense and the men and women who are serving and fighting and risking their live,” McCain said. His favorite spending project, he said sarcastically, was the glass-blowing museum in Ohio.
The Pig Book defines pork as spending that meets at least one of seven criteria: requested by only one chambter 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; and serves only a local or special interest.
The national spending per person for pork is $30.55, according to the Pig Book. “Alaska this year has $489.87 per person and Hawaii has $378.29 per person,” McCain said. “Those are my citizens’ tax dollars that are being inappropriately allocated to states not by virtue or need for these tax dollars but through the earmarking process. My constituents deserve better.”
Arizona, according to the Pig Book, received $228,076,000, or $38.40 per capita (20 th in the nation), in projects the group identified as pork.
Coburn said that it is important to recognize that not all earmarks are necessarily bad.
“It’s not about whether a project may or may not be good, it’s about whether or not elected leaders in this country have the courage to make the hard decision about where we spend money and where we don’t; the process is broken,” Coburn said.
“Earmarks are the gateway drug to overspending,” he said. “We are overspending, and what we are spending is future opportunities for our children and grandchildren.”
New Hampshire ranked 11 th in the nation for pork spending per capita at $62.36. It ranked 15 th last year. Some of the pork spending cited in the granite state was $1.1 million for Operation Streetsweeper, added by a Senate-House conference committee, and $1 million for a High Performance Brush Program, introduced in the House.
Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H, was one of a handful of senators from both parties who introduced earmark reform legislation in February along with McCain and Coburn. Sununu said in an interview Wednesday, that the senators were able to get some provisions included in the lobbying reform bill.
“There were a couple of other items that we would have liked to have seen in the bill.. I think we’re going to come back to try to address those,” Sununu said.
Disclosure and transparency are important in earmark reform, Sununu said.
“It should be part of either the House bill or the Senate bill so that it doesn’t just appear magically in conference,” he said. “We should know who’s making the request, and I just think that would result in a better process.”
“I don’t think it’s feasible to eliminate all earmarks, and in some circumstances it’s not desirable,” Sununu said. “Congress has the power.to write these appropriations bills, we need to recognize that, but more disclosure and transparency, I think, would really improve the process.”
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