December 3, 2004

“It’s the Christmas season and they’ve done it again, kid,” said Vinny the Number Cruncher, my gray-haired accountant.

“What now, Vinny?”

“Congress just passed the 2005 Omnibus spending bill and this one is packed with some doozies. Thanks to our generous legislators, American taxpayers will contribute $150,000 to fund a therapeutic horseback riding program at the Lady B Ranch in California.”

“What the heck is therapeutic horseback riding?”

“Beats me, kid. All I know is that it was the result of the old omnibus spending bill scam that Congress slips by us every year.”

“You’re going to have to explain this to me again.”

“See, kid, every year there are 13 separate appropriation bills that Congress must pass and the president must sign to fund all the activities within the federal government. What our esteemed politicians like to do is drag their feet on each bill, then combine a whole bunch of them into one massive omnibus bill. This year, they combined nine of the 13 appropriations bills into a $388 billion bill. And this time, they packed it with more than 11,000 pork projects, a record.”

“Eleven thousand!

“Yeah, kid. There’s $50,000 to control the feral hog population in Missouri, $250,000 for traffic calming in Windermere, Florida, and another $25,000 to teach mariachi music at the Clark County School District in Nevada.

“Cha, cha, cha, Vinny. But what’s new about any of this? We’ve got a massive deficit and Congress still finds creative ways to blow our hard-earned money.”

“Kid, what is new is the way Congress is dispensing pork. The Heritage Foundation people put their finger on it. In the old days, Congress funded grant programs and then asked federal agencies, governors and mayors to award the grants. That meant the receivers of the grants had to compete and only the most capable applicants got the dough.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“But over the past few years, the trend has been for Congress to hand out the pork DIRECTLY. In essence, they’re handing out dough to those groups that hire the best lobbyists.”

“You mean the pork projects, in essence, are going to the groups that hire the lobbyists that generate the most campaign dough for politicians?”

“Basically, kid. In the old days we called such things kickbacks. And that’s why there are more pork projects than ever. Six years ago, there were 2,000 stuffed into various bills. In 2003, there were 7,000. In 2004, there were 10,656. And this year, there are more than 11,000. In fact, total spending on pork projects will cost American taxpayers $23 billion this year.”

“But with all the added spending on Homeland Security and the war on terrorism, we can’t afford this kind of waste, Vinny!”

“So naïve, kid. Look, don’t you remember the way our lawmakers packed billions of dollars of wasteful projects into the Homeland Security bill? They slipped even more into the bill to fund the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan. They keep getting away with it, so its no wonder they’re going to get even bolder with this year’s bill.”

“And they’ll keep doing so until American taxpayers rise up and demand that they stop?”

“Kid, lawmakers are still using a budget process that was created in 1974. It offers no workable tools to keep lawmakers from slipping all kinds of goodies by the American taxpayer. Some lawmakers have offered solutions, such as the Family Budget Protection Act, but Congress keeps shooting down any reform ideas.”

“In other words, the pork will continue?”

“That’s right, kid. That’s why Congress is giving $950,000 to the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, $250,000 for Alaska Statehood Celebration at University of Alaska, and nearly $7 million to support wood utilization research across several states.”

“So it’s going to be a very Merry Christmas after all, Vinny?”

“Yeah, kid, for everyone but the American taxpayer.” 

Tom Purcell

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