Pork - the meta analysis

The Coburn amendment(s) designed to cut pork from the budget and reassign the funds to pay for Katerina recovery went down to defeat in the Senate today. 86-13. It was not even close.

No one who pays attention to American politics should be surprised. Larding spending bills with bridges to no where and sculpture gardens in Seattle is a time honoured American legislative tradition. The bridge to nowhere, by the way, is in Alaska whose 84 year old Senator threatened to resign if the amendment passed. Here’s what Ronald Utt at the Heritage Foundation wrote about the bridge,

Today, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) will offer an amendment to the Senate’s appropriation bill to transfer the $223 million that Congress had previously approved for a bridge in Ketchikan, Alaska, to fund reconstruction of a hurricane-damaged bridge in Louisiana. Dubbed the “Bridge to Nowhere,” the bridge in Alaska would connect the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) with its airport on the Island of Gravina (population 50) at a cost to federal taxpayers of $320 million, by way of three separate earmarks in the recent highway bill. At present, a ferry service runs to the island, but some in the town complain about its wait (15 to 30 minutes) and fee ($6 per car). The Gravina Island bridge project is an embarrassment to the people of Alaska and the U.S. Congress. Fiscally responsible Members of Congress should be eager to zero out its funding.
heritage foundation

Bloggers, from Instapundit to Koslined up in support of the amendment. But, in an across party line vote the amendments were roundly defeated.

At Powerline a Senator is quoted as saying in a speech against the amendments,

Patty Murray is now speaking against the Coburn Amendment, and has just issued a threat against any Senators who vote for the amendment: we on the Appropriations Committee will take a “long, hard look” at any projects in your state.
powerline

While the blogs will be seething, the Senators have behaved in a perfectly rational, indeed expected fashion. While Senators, and all politicians in all democracies, in principle serve the electorate as a whole, in practice they pay attention to people who really, really need their services.

Up close and personal are the other 99 Senators. Members of one of the great legislative bodies in the world. Each one, by virtue of election to the Senate, presidential timber. Each with the prospect of running a re-election campaign. Each with the daunting task of raising several million dollars for that campaign. Each with home town media and statehouses clamouring for this or that pet project. And each with the certain knowledge that Senator Murray spoke nothing less than the truth.

It has been fashionable since the era of the railroad trust to talk about vested interests and the control they exercise over legislatures. There is nothing particularly sinister about this control, it simply comes down to the fact that if you stand to gain a ten million dollar contract from the federal government you are rather more deeply committed to the process than a taxpayer who is going to pay a penny more a year in tax to finance your project.

So long as a legislature operates in an enviornment where campaign contributions are - indirectly of course - tied to their ability to bring home the bacon it is a sure bet they will. Now, to bring that bacon home they have to have the support of their fellow Senators and the way to get that support is to understand that those Senators have exactly the same incentives.

While the Porkbuster iniative is a wonderful opportunity to mobilize bloggers and people who read blogs to start demanding an end to the waste, it is not going to succeed until it stops attacking waste and starts attacking the incentive structure which surrounds the Senators.

On the Left there has been a good deal of comentary on what the political purpose of the internet is and should be. How to turn typists into activists, how to mobilize and keep mobilized the “netroots” of the Democratic Party. On the Right there has been a good deal of concern about the seeming fiscal recklessness of the Bush Administration - a record of not one veto in six years suggests a degree of complicity even to the most ardent Bush supporter.

Polling is indicating that while the President is in free fall there are few signs that the Democratic Party is benefiting from the President’s unpopularity. Indeed, what the polling seems to be indicating is that the American electorate is moving further and further away from both parties.

Electorates are not stupid. They are capable of seeing when their short and long term interests are being compromised. And they are capable of responding to political leaders who are willing to lead.

Here’s how Dr. Coburn put it,

“The American people expect their elected officials to make sacrifices in a time of war, rising deficits, and disaster recovery. Unfortunately, many members of Congress are more committed to protecting a system that allows them to fund extravagant projects at the expense of the common good. Our refusal to prioritize spending and exercise restraint has created a rumble among the American people. Tonight’s vote will only cause that rumble to grow,”
senator coburn quoted at the club for growth

The ultimate disincentive for a politician of any sort is for people to vote for someone else. However, Senate elections are on a six year rotation so that is only an option for one third of the Senate. Fund raising, on the other hand, is monitored daily.

A real rumble would be felt if contributors simply sat on their check books until pork was trimmed. But an even greater tremblor would shake the Senate if contributors made it known that they would be giving their money to candidates who either voted for the Coburn amendment or were trying to defeat Senators who voted against it.

Changing a poltical culture is not about killing one or two of an estimated 13, 997 pork projects on the books for 2005. The death of those project will be a consquence rather than a cause of the change. The question is whether Americans are willing to make pork a litmus test.

Let’s hope they are.

Written by jay on October 21st, 2005 with 2 comments.
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