WASHINGTON – For all the hand-wringing on Capitol Hill about larding bills with home-state projects, the latest report from a taxpayer group says lawmakers hit a record last year.
Citizens Against Government Waste, in its annual “Pig Book” released Wednesday, details $29 billion of pork barrel spending – money for home state and home district projects specially set aside in congressional spending measures.
Money for roads and bridges, grants to law enforcement agencies and charity groups, and water projects is well received back home, which in turn feeds lawmakers’ appetites for the projects.
Some of these earmarks are more audacious than others. For example, last year there was a provision for a “bridge to nowhere,” a $223 million project connecting Alaska’s Gravina Island – population 50 – to the mainland. That project drew so much ridicule from the media that the bridge was shelved.
The anti-pork group has a pretty broad definition of what constitutes pork. Anything not specifically requested by President Bush automatically qualifies. Others prefer the know-it-when-you-see-it test.
Lots of earmarks qualify under either criterion. Consider a $1 million water-free urinal conservation initiative obtained by Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., or a $500,000 grant for the Arctic Winter Games in Alaska, slipped into a Pentagon spending bill by GOP Sen. Ted Stevens.
Even though term limit rules have forced Stevens out as Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, he still runs its defense subcommittee and managed to deliver $325 million to Alaska, according to the group’s estimates. That comes to about $490 for every man, woman and child in the state.
Just slightly behind – at least on a per capita basis – was Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, who has a peas-in-a-pod relationship with Stevens as the top Democrat on that Appropriations subcommittee. Inouye helped deliver $482 million to Hawaii, or $378 a person.
The nationwide average is $31 in pork per capita. That means larger states such as Florida, Georgia, Michigan and Texas are not getting an equal share compared with smaller states represented by veterans such as Stevens; Inouye; Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. ($132 per capita); or Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss. ($110 per capita).
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