Democrats extol the virtues of pork

Democrats have engaged in a strange new political campaign on behalf of pork-barrel spending.  The Washington Times reports on the new public-relations battle to make Capitol Hill pork as hip as Twitter and as American as … well, pork pie, apparently.  In doing so, they not only skip over their entire 2006-8 rhetoric about the “culture of corruption,” they also dishonestly avoid mentioning one important difference between earmarks and agency procurement:

Capitol Hill’s top Democrats are making a full-throated effort to rebrand earmarks as good government, not a dirty word synonymous with pork-barrel hijinks.

With President Obama’s vow to clamp down on earmarks putting pressure on lawmakers to change their ways, congressional leaders have set out to educate voters about why they think Congress should direct dollars to districts or states for specific pet projects.

“That there is something inherently evil, wicked or criminal or wrong with [earmarks], it’s just not the case,” said Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, noting that he earmarked millions of dollars in the pending omnibus spending bill for what he said were worthy projects in his home state.

Mr. Durbin said lawmakers’ pet projects are listed in the bill and exposed to public scrutiny, and that members of Congress know how to best spend taxpayer dollars in their districts and states.

“Otherwise, what happens? We give the money to the agency downtown and they decide where to spend it,” Mr. Durbin said on the Senate floor. “It isn’t as if the money won’t be spent. Oh, it will be spent. But it may not be spent as effectively or for projects that are as valuable.”

Durbin speaks dishonestly in a number of different ways.  Congress can mandate projects without mandating the actual line items for that project, so the argument that certain projects wouldn’t get funded is entirely specious.  Also, Durbin says this with a straight face while Congress mandates million-dollar bikepaths in transportation bills while complaining about the infrastructure of roads and bridges.  An assertion that Congress has better judgment is easily disproven by each session it meets and produces these kinds of pork items.

Durbin also lies about “public scrutiny”.  What public scrutiny could he possibly mean?  Most earmarks don’t get released until either just before a final vote on passage, especially on “airdropped” earmarks inserted into conference reports.  Instead of a public vote on each earmark, Congress attaches them in bills without a vote on them at all.  It takes an amendment to attempt to get public debate and a separate vote on any earmark, which are routinely defeated by both parties.  Until 2007, Congress didn’t even require its members to take ownership of their earmarks.  Only then do we see PMA’s success in getting earmarks for its clients in return for prodigious amounts of political contributions, which Congress won’t even investigate.

Public scrutiny?  Does Durbin think we’re that stupid?

Finally, the idea that earmarks spend money more effectively is blatant and hypocritical hogwash.  Congress rightly mandates a competitive bidding process for agencies in their procurement, but earmarks allow Congress to bypass those requirements for itself.  Earmarks do not have RFPs and competitive bids.  Representatives and Senators effectively write checks to favored constituents, checks drawn on taxpayer dollars, with no idea whether the product or service is the most cost-efficient or even acceptable.  And agencies have to accept the contracts without challenging such vendors with competing bids.  Competitive bidding would make political contributions irrelevant to the success of a business, and therefore would eliminate a big chunk of incumbency’s advantage over challengers.

And that’s what pork is: an incumbency-protection racket that hijacks representative democracy in favor of patronage systems and lifelong sinecures at the government teat.

Now Democrats want to defend that system.  It’s a strange political choice, but one that would give Republicans an opening in 2010, if they could reject pork as a party and insist on cold-turkey for all the members of their own caucus.  Unfortunately, they have chosen not to do so, at least thus far, which makes them even more hypocritical than their colleagues across the aisle, who at least give a rationale for their pork addiction.