Pork Report 2005 By Ira Carnahan
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Feeling a little poor after paying your income taxes? You also may begin feeling a little angry when you hear where some of your tax dollars are going. Just out with an update is Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington, D.C.-based group that publishes an annual report known as the Congressional Pig Book.
Pork-barrel spending for fiscal 2005 reached a record $27.3 billion, according to CAGW, a 19% increase over last year. While just what counts as "pork" is open to debate--one man's pork being another's essential government service-- CAGW requires that pork meet at least one of seven criteria, e.g., it's not competitively awarded, not subject to congressional hearings, or it serves only a local or special interest. Much of the spending noted by the group is dubious indeed and takes place in the districts or states of powerful members of congressional appropriations committees.
Among the "awards" handed out by CAGW this year:
· The Halls of Shame Award--for $1.4 million spent on various halls of fame, including $75,000 for the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame and $70,000 for the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame
· The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Pork Award--for $100,000 to the Tiger Woods Foundation for "at risk" youth programs in Los Alamitos, Calif.
· The Sapping the Taxpayers Award--for $6.3 million spent on wood-use research
· The La Pork-a-Racha Award--for $25,000 to the Clark County School District in Nevada to develop a curriculum for the study of mariachi music
· The Fiscal Unfitness Award--for $6.7 million to fund YMCAs
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· The Pirates on the Potomac Award--for $2 million to buy back the USS Sequoia presidential yacht
· The Hog Heaven Award--for $8.2 million to the Fort Lewis Army Chapel, which offers religious services for Christians, Jews, Muslims--and Wiccans
· The Hogzilla Award--to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) for his $646 million in pork for Alaska
· The Flipping the Byrd at the Taxpayers Award--to Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) for his $399 million in pork for West Virginia
There's a lot more questionable spending that wasn't quite bad enough to win an award. Take the $469,000 in taxpayer dollars that went to the National Wild Turkey Federation, which according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture "supports public conservation education, especially that concerning wild turkey hunting as a traditional North American sport."
Overlapping such pork is the broader category of corporate welfare, which the Cato Institute discusses in its latest Cato Handbook on Policy. Cato defines corporate welfare as "government programs that provide unique benefits or advantages to specific companies or industries." According to Cato, the biggest recipients of this largesse include: the big three auto makers, General Motors (GM), Ford Motor (F) and DaimlerChrysler (DCX), which get handouts to develop new car technology; Boeing (BA), which dines on export subsidies; and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the king of agricultural and ethanol subsidies.
It turns out some states get much bigger servings of pork, per person, than others. The best-fed is Alaska, which received $985 for every man, woman and child. That's a whopping 30 times the national average. Other states in the top five for pork include Hawaii, West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota. The five states that get the least pork per capita? Texas, California, Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina.
In what areas of the government is pork growing the fastest? CAGW points to homeland security, which saw pork increase 306% this year to $1.7 billion; energy and water, which increased 163% to $1.9 billion; and labor/health and human services, which increased 80% to $1.7 billion.
