the Pig Book: 13.2 billion, and funding the Iraq war

I belong to a group called Citizens against government waste, its basically a taxpayer watchdog group. Below are a few examples from what we call the "pig book" which is a summary of pork spending by the U.S. congress.

The appropriations bill for Iraq that are currently in dispute in washington over the attached withdrawl dates also include some choice spending. Here are a few items I found rather amusing (slected at random):


1.$59,000,000 for medical research projects ranging from cancer to diabetes to gynecological disease. As important as this research may be, there is no mention as to why these programs should receive money from the Department of Defense. One program which weighs heavily on taxpayers in this category is $1.35 million for the “Obesity in the Military Research Program.”


2. $5,500,000 added by the House for the Gallo Center. According to its website, “The Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center (EGCRC) at the University of California, San Francisco (USCF) was established in 1980 to study basic neuroscience and the effects of alcohol and drug abuse on the brain.” There is no mention of any defense-related research. Apparently, they will serve no pork before its time.

3. $5,000,000 added in the House for alcohol breath testers. According to the House fiscal 2006 Department of Defense Appropriations Report, “The impact of excessive alcohol use and driving under the influence continues as a leading cause of ground accidents, injury, death, and physical damage across the Services.” Out of the $5 million total, $4,500,000 will directly go toward the procurement of Breathscan® alcohol testers. They are already in use at Fort Bliss, Texas as the Army Surgeon General issued individual breathalyzers before the start of the 2006 holiday season.

4. $1,000,000 secured by now-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to fund the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center. In a September 2006 press release announcing her pork victory, she said the center will serve as an “education center and project to preserve the site of the U.S. Army’s first language school established in 1941.”

5.$12,000,000 added by the House for the Rural Domestic Preparedness Consortium in the district of then-House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.). This program is supposed to help protect citizens living in rural areas by training rural emergency responder teams. The funding is to be distributed to an assortment of universities that are not yet known. Meanwhile, funding for the program has increased by 20 percent from last year’s level.

6.$2,500,000 added in conference for the U.S. Secret Service National Special Security Events Fund. The purpose of the fund is to help plan and coordinate major events, such as national political conventions, international summits, presidential inaugurations, the Super Bowl, and even the Olympics when hosted by the U.S. These events take years to organize; the funding should be treated the same way. If money needs to be allocated, it should be requested in advance, included in the budget, and authorized.

Source: http://www.cagw.org

So hip hip hooray ! The Democrats are back..... the other white meat !

OK, there is something really wrong with how bills are passed in the USA. This might be true of many other countries as well.

Bills should stick to the point, and it should not be possible to add such utterly irrelevant addendums.

Mind you, political funding reform in the UK hit the concrete when the funding of the Labour Party by Unions was threatened. :wall:

~:smoking:

I fail to see how any of that is wasteful.

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Originally Posted by rory_20_uk

OK, there is something really wrong with how bills are passed in the USA. This might be true of many other countries as well.

Bills should stick to the point, and it should not be possible to add such utterly irrelevant addendums.

Mind you, political funding reform in the UK hit the concrete when the funding of the Labour Party by Unions was threatened. :wall:

~:smoking:

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I agree, the problem is that the best possible solution is allowing the president a line item veto (I'd like to wait until mr bush leaves though). Sadly the supreme court has deemed that as unconstitutional, so as taxpayers all we have to hope for is the ethics of out elected officials. :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by lars573

I fail to see how any of that is wasteful.

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It does not pertain to the intent of the bill filed. Pork spending are attachements to bills that circumvent the budget process.

That is how it is wasteful, these are out of budget expenses tacted onto a bill for military funding, pure pork.

There is a really simple solution to that problem which is called the line-item veto. It would allow the President to veto all of the pork, but still sign into law the parts of the bill which were the original intent of the bill. Unfortunately, both sides (Democrats and Republicans) are too afraid of giving this power to opposition presidents. Also, how would they get re-elected if they didn't spread a little pork around? Of course, term limits would make that a moot point, but we'll see pork flying before we see sitting Senators and Representatives limiting their own time on the gravy train.

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Originally Posted by Odin

It does not pertain to the intent of the bill filed. Pork spending are attachements to bills that circumvent the budget process.

That is how it is wasteful, these are out of budget expenses tacted onto a bill for military funding, pure pork.

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Then I guess the Westminsterian definition of Political Pork is totally different from the presidential republic one. When ever someone speaks of political pork they are refering to using your public office to give your friends/family/aquantences a boost. Via contracts or appointments.

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Originally Posted by lars573

Then I guess the Westminsterian definition of Political Pork is totally different from the presidential republic one. When ever someone speaks of political pork they are refering to using your public office to give your friends/family/aquantences a boost. Via contracts or appointments.

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"A "pork" project is a line-item in an appropriations or authorization bill that designates funds for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures."

This is the definition used by my group, your definition is also true as in the cagw's view 1 of the 7 criteria below must be filled to qualify the appropriation as pork:


1.Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
2.Not specifically authorized;
3.Not competitively awarded;
4.Not requested by the President;
5.Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
6.Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
7.Serves only a local or special interest.

In the cases I listed in my first post, all of those appropriations meet one or more of the 7 criteria.

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Originally Posted by Odin

"A "pork" project is a line-item in an appropriations or authorization bill that designates funds for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures."

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Didn't "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" have a nice example of pork? Something like a flagship item of a summer camp for scouts, and attached to it were stuff for a dam or opencast mining or something.

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Originally Posted by Odin

"A "pork" project is a line-item in an appropriations or authorization bill that designates funds for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures."

This is the definition used by my group, your definition is also true as in the cagw's view 1 of the 7 criteria below must be filled to qualify the appropriation as pork:


1.Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
2.Not specifically authorized;
3.Not competitively awarded;
4.Not requested by the President;
5.Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
6.Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
7.Serves only a local or special interest.

In the cases I listed in my first post, all of those appropriations meet one or more of the 7 criteria.

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Some of those are very much allowed by our system or because of it's differences don't apply.

Going through it
1. Doesn't apply. Our senate has little real power. And the provincial legislatures are unicermal.
2. Not really sure what you mean by that. ~:confused:
3. That is a red flag for us too.
4. Doesn't apply.
5. Funding requests are given to the finance miniter for inclusion or exclusion in the yearly budgets.
6. Doesn't apply. Parlimentary commitees have little influence over budgetary or policy issues.
7. Our system provides for such bills to be introduced on their own. Via private member bills.

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Originally Posted by Odin

I belong to a group called Citizens against government waste, its basically a taxpayer watchdog group. Below are a few examples from what we call the "pig book" which is a summary of pork spending by the U.S. congress.

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Heh, where were you when a certain poster was decrying CAGW as a right-wing partisan group because they opposed net neutrality? :dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by lars573

Then I guess the Westminsterian definition of Political Pork is totally different from the presidential republic one. When ever someone speaks of political pork they are refering to using your public office to give your friends/family/aquantences a boost. Via contracts or appointments.

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In this case, it's to send juicy government dollars back to the legislator's political supporters back home.

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Originally Posted by gunslinger

There is a really simple solution to that problem which is called the line-item veto.

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I think the real "simple" solution would be to elect responsible representatives who let funding like the above pass or fail on it's own merits rather than quietly and sometimes anonymously slipping it into larger must-pass bills. I think it's sad that something like the line-item veto is something that's seen as necessary- it's a further delegation of responsibility from the legislative to the executive, all because the legislative branch is too busy pandering and buying votes to actually do it's job and not behave irresponsibly with our money. :furious3:

If at all possible, would one of you students of consitutional affairs explain how this system allowing unconnected riders to be added to bills came about?

Is it an unforeseen development from amending bills (ie legislation may be amended as it progresses through Congress, but the aversion to restricting freedoms may allow a legislator free rein as to those amendments) or specifically built into either the Consititution or governmental rules?

I'd be very grateful to be able to understand how this came about. :bow:

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Originally Posted by Odin

I agree, the problem is that the best possible solution is allowing the president a line item veto (I'd like to wait until mr bush leaves though). Sadly the supreme court has deemed that as unconstitutional, so as taxpayers all we have to hope for is the ethics of out elected officials. :laugh4:

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Line-item veto's would make a president far too powerful and are a bad idea. You're indicating that yourself with your comment on Bush.

The better solution would be to reform the way congress can amend bills, make the House rules more like the Senate rules, limit amendments to 'related items' and make it easier for other congressmen to oppose an amendment instead of everyone just piling their own crap on.

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

If at all possible, would one of you students of consitutional affairs explain how this system allowing unconnected riders to be added to bills came about?

Is it an unforeseen development from amending bills (ie legislation may be amended as it progresses through Congress, but the aversion to restricting freedoms may allow a legislator free rein as to those amendments) or specifically built into either the Consititution or governmental rules?

I'd be very grateful to be able to understand how this came about. :bow:

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Try this article BQ it might help answer part of your question. I truelly don't know how it actually started, but this article gives a decent run down based upon the Veto power of the president. Riders were basically an attempt to pass measures that would normally expect a veto from the President.

http://www.americanheritage.com/arti...974_2_12.shtml

Wikipedia gives a simple explanation to the problem of the rider

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider_(legislation)

Now people talk about the Line Item Veto a lot, but it seems even I missed something important about the Line Item Veto

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/...otus.lineitem/

The great Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1998

Pork sucks, period. And it's clear from this discussion that a line-item veto is not the answer. If we want to see an institutional change that will make pork harder to slip and slide into other bills, we'll need some sort of procedural change from the legislative branch.

I had hoped that a congress voted in largely due to voter disgust with pork and corruption would behave better. On the other hand, I find the sudden Republican interest in pork and corruption shameless. No administration in recent history has presided over anything like the pork explosion of the last six years, so it's a little rich to hear people like Cheney suddenly noticing and decrying wasteful spending. I guess it's bad when it's not their pork.

From my readings I really don't think that there is much you could do to eliminate pork. Unless you chuck the whole presidential republic in favor or a parlimentary republic (like Germany) or semi-presidential republic (like France/Russia). As I doubt that the legislators would be willing to eliminate their ability to get cash for their constituants. After all nothing buys votes better than bringing home the bacon.

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Originally Posted by Lemur

I had hoped that a congress voted in largely due to voter disgust with pork and corruption would behave better. On the other hand, I find the sudden Republican interest in pork and corruption shameless. No administration in recent history has presided over anything like the pork explosion of the last six years, so it's a little rich to hear people like Cheney suddenly noticing and decrying wasteful spending. I guess it's bad when it's not their pork.

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I think you'll find that the minority party is always the one that's most concerned with pork. No matter what their ideological differences, the minority party will always criticize the majority for its excesses and when they become the majority they'll immediately set to work feathering their nests.

I know it's still early, but we're not seeing that gridlock you hoped for.

Thank you Redleg, for the links. Most interesting.

:bow: