A Centrist’s POV: The new Party of Pork

As a fiscal issue whether it's presented as earmarks or porkbarrel politics, this is largely a red herring. In aggregate earmarks just don't comprise that large a proportion of the budget.

If we're going to achieve fiscal sanity, either we're going to have to reduce spending on the major expenditure items like Social Security, defense, and Medicare or we'll need to increase taxes. The English language is sadly lacking in an inclusive or.

The economy just isn't going to grow fast enough to achieve fiscal sanity painlessly. We must make choices.

As an indication of the importance of this debt service dwarfs earmarks as a percentage of the federal budget. It's not even close. That's the price of refusing to make hard decisions in the past—you don't have as much to spend on things that you really want in the future.

Actually, it's Social Security and Medicare, not defense, which are the monsters in the budget.

As for the earmarks, serious people want them ended, not "fairly apportioned" -- that smacks of political and fiscal prostitution.

Real Americans don't want any kind of redistribution, taxes taken and then re-dispensed (redistributed) as grants to states, counties, or Congressional districts (or to municipalities, etc.).

The biggest problem with pork isn't the overall level of the expenditures, it's the corrupting influence of the contracts that end up being awarded. So you're right to point out that a better fix *might* be to have the self dealing reviewed, but what does that mean, exactly? Who would do this reviewing? Would all family members have to be excluded from any potential contracts? What about friends, former business associates? What about lobbyists? Would these relationships simply have to be disclosed for greater transparency, and if that approach were taken, would the voters really care enough to send a message to a Congressperson that the nepotism and/or corruption isn't acceptable, or would they look the other way because they still felt that their district benefitted from the project?

And that's the problem- I don't think that's possible to accomplish. Therefore I'd rather see the transparency happen at the level at which the projects are written into the legislation. If the project can't be defended as being beneficial to the NATIONAL interest (and with sufficient priority to take place at the national level), it has no place being in the federal budget.

DLS,
I consider myself a "serious person" and "real american", and support managed earmarks as a useful and appropriate tool of government.

And I support redistributed funds that serve the national interest in the form of environmental protection (Levees) , national security (Border control), and the like. I don't see these as black and white choices but complex resource management that invites pragmatic, open minded people to work together to set priorities.

I pay a lot of taxes but my concern is not that taxes be blindly lowered but rather managed efficiently. Social Security and Medicare are treasures that demonstrate our humanity and compassion as a society, and will not go away. I would prefer that taxes don't go up but I accept that obligation if that preserves the wellbeing of my family, friends and neighbors.

CStanley,
Yours are reasonable concerns, that are already part of the current earmark reviews.
It is an imperfect system that will require constant reform to adjust for abuse. It's the nature of our form of government.

Also, I agree with those who feel that some amount of taxes collected by the Federal Government should more appropriately be collected by local, county and state governments for the local good.

You might want to check your figures, DLS. Here's the breakdown of major expenditure items for the federal budget 2007 (in billions):

Social Security $586.1
Military: 548.8
Medicare: 394.5
Unemployment and welfare: 367.0
Medicaid: 276.4
Debt service: 243.7

Medicare is growing the fastest (12% per year) so it should have great concern but your statement that we spend more on Medicare than on defense is simply untrue.

All of this is beside my point which is that concern about earmarks is disproportionate to their presence in the budget. If we really wanted to be concerned about something it should be debt service which constitutes 8% of the total budget and doesn't do anybody a bit of good, merely representing prior years' unwillingness to make our revenues and expenditures balance out.

The failure to end earmarks is an example of a failure of leadership. If Congress cannot even cut a small amount of spending (make a sacrifice, then how can they ask everyone else to pay more in taxes.

Leading a charge to end earmarks will be a good indications of leadership. Finding a way to institutionalize them is a failure of leadership.

Social Security leads and Medicare will rise enormously, even if it is not extended to children or to all Americans. Our population is aging. We all know discretionary expenditures (which is as true for official welfare programs, i.e., assistance to the poor, as it is for earmarks) are relatively small. That does not justify their existence.

* * *

Taxing and redistribution, which always has strings attached (the most notorious example being highway funds; Medicare extended to everybody would be insanely corrupting), is wrong; if states or localities want something, they should levy their own taxes and make their own expenditures. It's wrong and wrongful to have the federal government levy the taxes and then having people clamoring for it to be redistributed to them, like children clustering around someone holding a bag of candy.

* * *

Nobody is talking about "blindly" lowering taxes (and federal expenditures), which is an unearned, dishonest-if-continued pejorative. Overgrowth and over-interventionism by Washington has long proven itself failed and wrong and should be corrected. Morality is on my side of this position, without (serious) question.

It is the conscious institutionalization of failure, SD.

"Social Security and Medicare are treasures that demonstrate our humanity and compassion as a society"

???

Both are unsustainable in their current forms.

The most that can honestly be argued about them in their favor is on utilitarian grounds only -- that some will not be able to avoid poverty in old age or health care if they didn't exist. That is all that can be claimed for them. Emotive arguments have no supporting or other value whatsoever. In fact, these are programs that properly and rightfully should be undertaken instead (if at all) by state and local governments; proponents lose on federalist and legal as well as other grounds.

So states that don't have the resources should just be ignored and treated as though their citizens are not also citizens of the United States who deserve the same consideration and compassion as other Americans? This is my problem with the conservative view of Federalism. They constantly go on about how the states are the ones that know the local needs but never explain what to do when there are states that don't have nearly the resources as other states or if there is a purely regional economic downturn.

After the experience here in Missouri I'd rather get the states out of it entirely, to be honest. The Republican Governor and legislature took over 100,000 people off of Medicaid. They never claimed that the people didn't need the help, that they weren't poor and had health problems and many were in fact disabled. They just said that it was a budgetary issue, not an ideological one. Yet when the state's economic fortunes turned around and they could easily have been restored to the program the Republicans refused to do so. Now they've eliminated Medicaid effective later this year and replaced with another program entirely. There are lots of questions about the new program and frankly, I think it's going to be an unmitigated disaster because while the principles behind it sound good on first examination I have no reason to believe that it will be funded properly for it to have a chance of working. I also think that the Republicans behind it know and don't care. It will be another government program for them to condemn as being worse than the private sector, while conveniently not mentioning that they designed it that way.

Think about that, Paul. Because of balanced budget requirements at the state and local level, these programs would have to be slashed to the bone if not eliminated when they are needed the most. That would be the inevitable consequence of leaving social programs, or even most of responsibility for them, to the states. I have never seen a reasonable conservative answer to that flaw in their ideology.

Jim, I am sympathetic with your concern. What I wrote was " that SOME amount of taxes collected by the Federal Government should more appropriately be collected by local, county and state governments ..."
I had in mind some expenses for local transportation, utilities, infrastructure, Culture...