Federal File: Pork Pie

The House-Senate conference report that came with a $400 billion

spending bill enacted last month contains a little extra reading

material you won’t find in the actual bill.

It includes page after page of what are commonly known as earmarks.

Critics derisively call it “pork barrel” spending, since most of the

money goes to parochial projects in lawmakers’ home states and

districts.

The Department of Education’s portion of the fiscal 2003 budget has

more than $350 million in earmarks. None of those projects was

subject to a grant competition. And the agency won’t use a poverty

formula to target the money to needy children.

The Philadelphia Orchestra will get $175,000 for educational

programs. Iowa will get yet another installment, this time $7

million, for its school-construction demonstration program.

A rough count showed 99 earmarks totaling about $40 million for

Pennsylvania and 26 earmarks for about $21 million for Iowa. It

comes as little surprise those states made out so well. Sen. Arlen

Specter, R-Pa., chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor,

Health and Human Services, and Education; Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa is

the ranking Democrat.

One earmark was especially curious. The University of Akron in Ohio

will get $500,000 to pay for the “Exercise in Hard Choices” program,

courtesy of Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio. The program is designed “to

help citizens and students understand the federal budget process,”

the conference report says. Really.

“There are days when I think I can’t be surprised,” said Chris

Kinnan, a spokesman for Citizens for a Sound Economy, a

Washington-based watchdog group: “And then I am.” He suggested

lawmakers should sign up for the program.

But Carol Cox Wait argues that this $500,000 isn’t pork. Ms.

Wait-the president of the Washington-based Committee for a

Responsible Federal Budget, which will be getting a subgrant from

the University of Akron to continue its work on the project– said

“pork” is inserted for a purely local interest. This long-standing

project serves a “broad national purpose,” she said.

Of course, earmarks aside, there’s another reason the budget item

is intriguing It came in a spending bill Congress completed four

months late.

Oh, and lawmakers never got around to agreeing on a budget

resolution either. What’s that? Sign up for “Hard Choices” and

you’ll find out.