One GOP Bill Gets 215(!) Pork Projects
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GOP's Ax No Match for Pork Barrel
By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 3, 1999; Page A01
In 1995, the Republican revolution overthrew the Stateside
Land and
Water Conservation Fund. Over three decades, the federal
program had
provided more than $3 billion for nearly 40,000 park and
recreation
projects. But the battalion of GOP budget-cutters that stormed
Congress
that year killed it, arguing that the country's cash-flush
states and
communities ought to pay for their own swimming pools, tennis
courts,
baseball diamonds and land acquisitions.
Now the fund may be coming back from the dead. On July 13, the
House
narrowly approved an amendment restoring $30 million for it,
with 55
Republicans joining 157 Democrats in support. It was another
budget
season reminder that federal programs are still almost
impossible to bury
and that the GOP fire-breathers who once wore "Cut Spending
First" pins
and fought to abolish Cabinet agencies never quite revamped
Washington's spending culture.
Four years after House Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich's
post-election
prediction that GOP leadership would "radically transform the
way
government works by Easter," the federal government still does
almost
everything it did then. And while most Republicans still talk
about taming
the beast of big government and reining in runaway budgets,
they have
struggled mightily this summer to reconcile their lofty
budget-cutting
rhetoric with institutional and political pressures to spend.
Just last week, House Republicans tried to evade their own
supposedly
strict spending caps through "emergency spending" on routine
programs
such as veterans benefits and the census. GOP leaders also
larded up one
spending bill with 215 pork-barrel projects, funding
everything from
windstorm research to ship-bottom painting, and postponed
another
because they could not figure out how to keep it within their
caps.
Meanwhile, Republicans pushed their $792 billion tax cut by
pleading a
Washington spending addiction: If we don't send this money out
of town,
they argued, we'll surely spend it on wasteful programs.
"For those of us who came here with a zeal for limiting
government, it's
been a very frustrating 4 1/2 years," said Rep. Mark Sanford
(R-S.C.),
one of the most outspoken conservatives in the historic GOP
freshman
class of 1994, which has already dwindled in the House from 73
to 49
members. "We've been losing the battles, again and again."
There are plenty of explanations for this. Republicans have
taken political
hits for taking on popular programs, especially big
entitlements such as
Medicare; their attacks on the Department of Education were
widely
viewed as attacks on education. Even the purest conservatives
want to
bring pork home to their districts. Huge projected budget
surpluses have
dampened the urgency for cost-cutting. And the legislative
process has a
structural bias against killing programs, because the voters
and interest
groups who benefit from them the most are usually the only
ones to
mobilize when they are in danger.
But some Republicans argue that in fact, they are quietly
winning the war
on spending. The $1.7 trillion federal budget has grown more
slowly than
inflation since the Republican takeover, although that is
mostly due to
post-Cold War reductions in defense spending. And the GOP
nondefense
budget bills approved so far this year include no overall
funding increases
and some modest cuts; if Congress sticks to its overall
spending limits --
something many lawmakers say is doubtful -- further cuts could
be on the
way.
Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), another conservative in the class of
'94,
compares the federal budget to an ocean liner: Even tiny
shifts in direction
can produce a major difference in destination. Wamp says that
after most
voters blamed Republicans for the government shutdown in 1995,
the
revolutionaries realized that they had to start working within
the system,
that gradual change through compromise is better than
electoral defeat
through principle.
"We're not so dogmatic anymore. Most of us are more
pragmatic," Wamp
said. "We've made progress, at least holding the line on
spending. But we
can only do what's plausible."
Still, a "Return of the Living Dead" analysis by the
libertarian Cato Institute
suggests that the GOP's post-takeover declarations of a new
era of
budget austerity were vastly overblown. Since 1995, Cato
found,
spending has actually increased overall among the programs
targeted for
extinction in the original "Contract With America" budget,
including hikes
of 513 percent in school-to-work grants, 119 percent in the
Goals 2000
education program, and 72 percent in bilingual education
funding. The
three Cabinet agencies on the GOP's 1995 hit list are alive
and well; the
Commerce Department's budget has grown by 40 percent.
Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), another budget hawk who came to
Congress with the election of 1994, has been leading a lonely
crusade to
force his fellow Republicans to live within spending caps they
approved in
1997. He has achieved modest success in the House this year,
reducing
GOP spending proposals for transportation, agriculture,
foreign aid and
the legislative branch by more than $1.5 billion. But he says
the GOP
chairmen of the Appropriations subcommittees -- the so-called
College of
Cardinals -- have stymied his effort for true budget reform.
Appropriators, he complains, like to appropriate. "Around
here, it's still
spend, spend, spend," Coburn said.
Congress has zeroed out more than 300 programs since 1995, but
the
overall savings have been only about $3 billion a year, less
than one-fifth
of one percent of the budget. Most of the terminated programs
have been
small and easy targets, like the $148,000 House barber shop or
the $1
million River Confluence Ice Research program. This year, the
House has
proposed axing 24 more programs, including the $25 million
Selective
Service System that once administered the draft and the $35
million Triana
satellite that is supposed to beam footage of Earth over the
Internet. But it
is far from clear whether the Senate and the president will
agree.
In any case, as the Stateside Fund shows, killing a program
does not
always mean it stays dead. The notorious wool and mohair
subsidy had a
similar Lazarus-like experience after it was killed in 1996.
Last year, Sen.
Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), yet another staunch conservative,
stashed
no-interest loans to mohair farmers into a budget bill, as
well as a new
National Sheep Industry Improvement Center.
Last week, Rep. Merrill Cook (R-Utah) tried to cut funding for
the
Nuclear Energy Research Initiative, a $20 million line item
suspiciously
similar to the abolished Nuclear Energy Security Program.
Environmentalists and taxpayer groups also blast the
initiative as a
back-door effort to resurrect gas-cooled reactors, a program
Congress
killed in 1995. But Cook said he encountered resistance from
liberals and
conservatives alike, even though the initiative is also
pushing research into
the discredited notion of "cold fusion."
"I was amazed to see the pressure on me not to do this, even
from
conservative Republicans," said Cook, who did extract a
promise that
House Republican budget leaders will try to reduce the funding
in
negotiations with their Senate counterparts. "I have to say,
it's been very
disappointing to see how hard it is to cut waste around here.
The
Republicans are doing better than the Democrats, but we don't
have a lot
to brag about."
This phenomenon has not stopped Democrats from portraying
Republicans as heartless budget-slashers, a strategy that
worked wonders
after the government shutdown. Congress has cut funding for
heating oil
for the poor (20 percent) and legal services for the poor (31
percent) as
well as the National Endowment for the Arts (38 percent) and
National
Endowment for the Humanities (36 percent). This year,
Republicans have
proposed additional cuts in public broadcasting, space
exploration and
foreign aid -- inviting further attacks from the minority.
"It's the velvet glove now instead of the hammer, but they
still want to
attack Medicare to pay for a rich man's tax cut," said Rep.
David R.
Obey (D-Wis.), ranking minority member on the Appropriations
Committee. "It's the same goals, just with better PR agents."
One major test should come after the August recess, when the
House
debates its most controversial budget bill, covering most
health care, job
training and education programs. The projected $1 trillion
budget surplus
-- and the various plans to use it for tax cuts, debt
reduction or
prescription drug benefits -- are all based on assumptions
that Congress
will obey the spending caps. But Rep. John Edward Porter
(R-Ill.),
chairman of the subcommittee handling the bill, has warned
that he will
have to cut spending 20 percent to obey his spending cap, and
has argued
for the cap to be lifted, even if it melts away some of the
surplus.
The age-old dilemma for budget-cutters is that special
interests always go
to the mat for the programs that affect them; there are few
votes or
campaign contributions to be won by attacking any particular
program.
Sanford says that every day, constituents and lobbyists tell
him how much
they appreciate his efforts to slash federal spending. Then
they get to the
main reason for their visit: more funding for their pet
project.
One current example is farm policy. In 1995, the Republicans
passed the
Freedom to Farm Act, an effort to replace a subsidy-based
system that
guaranteed farm incomes with a market-based system that
reintroduced
risk. But last year, plummeting prices devastated farmers, so
the GOP
agreed to a $6 billion bailout to avoid alienating them. This
year prices are
even worse; Democrats are pushing for a $9.9 billion emergency
bailout,
and Republicans have countered with a package that some
analysts peg at
more than $6 billion.
"There are still some true believers, but most of the
budget-cutters have
succumbed," said Ralph DeGennaro, executive director of
Taxpayers for
Common Sense. "They want to get reelected. They want to
collect
campaign cash. So nothing ever really dies."
Of course, the Stateside Land and Water Conservation Fund
died, but its
death may be short-lived. Governors, mayors, local officials
and
environmentalists are lobbying for it, and so is the Clinton
administration.
In the end, making budgets has always been about making deals,
and even
revolutionaries like Wamp now talk about working within the
system.
"The Founding Fathers didn't want radical change to happen
overnight,"
Wamp said. "That's why they set up the government with all
these checks
and balances, to make it very hard to change things. That's
very frustrating
to some of us. But we're still pushing the envelope."
Growing Back
In 1995, the House GOP's "Contract With America" targeted
$75.3
billion worth of programs for extinction. Now the government
spends $77
billion on those programs. Here are some of the targeted
agencies and
programs for which spending has risen, in millions of dollars.