In Session : Congress
GOP Dishes Out Pork In Growing Portions
Democrats: Earmarked Projects Skyrocket
By Dan Morgan and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 24, 2003; Page A19
Way back before Republicans took over the House in 1995, GOP lawmakers pilloried Democrats for stuffing legislation with local projects that get little or no oversight but boost the popularity of the lawmakers who take credit for them.
In 1992, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the future House speaker, told colleagues: "Democrats . . . see no contradiction between adding a billion and a half dollars in pork-barrel [spending] for the politicians in their big-city machines and voting for a balanced budget amendment."
<font color=red>But a rising tide of GOP spending on home-district projects is making those Democrats of yesteryear look like mere pikers of pork, according to a 15-page study just released by the minority staff of the House Appropriations Committee.
The study finds that the number of home-state projects earmarked in various bills has skyrocketed under the GOP, despite the party's rhetorical commitment to reining in a profligate federal government. <font color=black>
Moreover, it contends, Republicans "have opened up broad new areas of government to the practice of earmarking that were previously not subject to earmarks."
A case in point, the Democrat staff report said, is the bill funding the Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services departments. Under Democratic chairmen such as the late William H. Natcher (D-Ky.), the bill was kept free of earmarks. Natcher preferred to let the money go out under formulas to school districts, community organizations and states.
But in 2002, the bill funneled more than $1 billion to hundreds of projects picked by members of Congress -- Democrats as well as Republicans.
A similar pattern has occurred in the quadrennial highway bill, once a bastion of congressional restraint. Earmarked projects jumped from fewer than 400 in 1995 to more than 1,800 in 1998, according to the Democratic analysis.
Moreover, even some fiscally conservative Republicans have not been shy about taking credit for bringing home the bacon.
The Web page of Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), a frequent critic of spending programs, lists projects recently obtained for his district, including $150,000 to help the Augusta Arts Council restore the Augusta Historic Theater, and "$180,000 to assist the City of Wichita in making the Evergreen Library more accessible to the community."
"Every federal dollar I can help bring back to Kansas is a dollar less that will have to be raised locally," Tiahrt said in a news release.
washingtonpost.com |
