Wednesday, September 12, 2001
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Wednesday, September 12, 2001 |
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How to stop the pork barrel gravy train By DAVE HAMRICK Various conservative organizations delight each year in listing some of the unconscionable ways in which our elected representatives waste our money in order to buy votes. While these efforts to raise public awareness are commendable, one begins to wonder if there's the slightest chance we'll ever start back up this slippery slope we're on. It's especially hard to imagine the nation ever making any progress, because it's difficult to imagine a majority ever getting angry enough to rise up in protest. For instance, in the examples I'm about to give you, listed for our amusement by the Libertarian Party of Georgia, I'm pretty ticked off about some of them, but I don't agree that all of them are outside the scope of what government should be doing. Here's a list of what the Libertarians call "the most ridiculous pork barrel projects of 2001:" • $250,000 to develop pungency testing procedures to improve the quality and sensory consistency of Vidalia onions. As a strong believer in free enterprise, I agree with the Libertarians. Let the people who stand to earn a living off Vidalia onions fund their own product research. • $400,000 for the National Center for Peanut Competitiveness. I bet you could trace that one back to the Carter years. If peanuts aren't competitive enough, let them plant soy beans. • $779,000 for a visitors center on Cumberland Island. A little more of a grey area. Some would argue that public parks and recreation areas are a legitimate function of government, and if they are, then maintaining and improving them is part of the bargain. It should be debated, though. • $430,000 for development and expansion of the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robbins. Again, we need a national debate about the role of the federal government. I would vote against its involvement in such as this, but it's arguable .• $430,000 for renovation of the Coach George E. Ford Cultural Arts Center in Powder Springs. Is it in the national interest? I think not. It's something purely for the enjoyment of the local residents, and should be funded by them. • $285,000 to study safe vegetable production. If there is a legitimate problem with safety in vegetable production, and if solving that problem would be of nationwide benefit, this one is OK by me. • $100,000 to study poult-enterititis mortality syndrome, a chicken ailment. Another clear example of politicians throwing money into a profit-making enterprise in order to curry favor, perhaps even get campaign contributions. You begin to see the problem. We say we want a stop to pork barrel spending, but when it comes down to cases, we're likely to disagree on what that is, exactly. It's not being defeatist to look realistically at the problem, but that doesn't mean we can't solve it, or at least mitigate it. What we need is to have a big debate and come up with some hard and fast, enforceable definitions of what the federal government should be involved in, and then pass laws prohibiting it from stepping over that line. The Constitution, some will argue, already has done that, setting out specifically the duties and powers of the federal government and reserving all other powers and duties to the states. The problem is that there is some blurry language in there about providing for the general welfare, and politicians have used that over the years to justify anything and everything they want to do, just about erasing the line between nation and state. A little more specificity is what we need. Oh, and some politicians with the intestinal fortitude to take the problem on in the first place. That would be nice, too.
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