Pork barrel

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Pork belly.
1917 cartoon from the New York World

Pork barrel, or simply pork, is a metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to direct spending to a representative's district.

The usage originated in American English,[1] and it indicates a negotiated way of political particularism.

Political science

Scholars use it as a technical term regarding legislative control of local appropriations.[2][3] In election campaigns, the term is used in derogatory fashion to attack opponents.

Typically, "pork" involves national funding for government programs whose economic or service benefits are concentrated in a particular area but whose costs are spread among all taxpayers.

agricultural subsidies
are the most commonly cited examples.

Citizens Against Government Waste[4] outlines seven criteria by which spending in the United States can be classified 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
  7. Serves only a local or special interest.

History and etymology

The term pork barrel politics usually refers to spending which is intended to benefit constituents of a politician in return for their political support, either in the form of campaign contributions or votes.

In the popular 1863 story "The Children of the Public", Edward Everett Hale used the term pork barrel as a homely metaphor for any form of public spending to the citizenry.[5] However, after the American Civil War, the term came to be used in a derogatory sense. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the modern sense of the term from 1873.[6]

Pork barrel originally came from storing meat.[7] By the 1870s, references to "pork" were common in Congress, and the term was further popularized by a 1919 article by Chester Collins Maxey in the National Municipal Review, which reported on certain legislative acts known to members of Congress as "pork barrel bills". He claimed that the phrase originated in a pre-Civil War practice of giving slaves a barrel of salt pork as a reward and requiring them to compete among themselves to get their share of the handout.[8] More generally, a barrel of salt pork was a common larder item in 19th-century households, and could be used as a measure of the family's financial well-being. For example, in his 1845 novel The Chainbearer, James Fenimore Cooper wrote: "I hold a family to be in a desperate way, when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel."[9]

Examples

An early example of pork barrel politics in the

United States Constitution. Although he approved of the economic development goal, President James Madison vetoed the bill as unconstitutional
.

One of the most famous alleged pork-barrel projects was the

billion, or over US$4 billion per mile.[10] Tip O'Neill (D-Mass), after whom one of the Big Dig tunnels was named, pushed to have the Big Dig funded by the federal government while he was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.[11]

During the

Ketchikan.[12]

Pork-barrel projects, which differ from earmarks, are added to the federal budget by members of the appropriation committees of United States Congress. This allows delivery of federal funds to the local district or state of the appropriation committee member, often accommodating major campaign contributors. To a certain extent, a member of Congress is judged by their ability to deliver funds to their constituents. The Chairman and the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations are in a position to deliver significant benefits to their states. Researchers Anthony Fowler and Andrew B. Hall claim that this still does not account for the high reelection rates of incumbent representatives in American legislatures.[13] Former Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye described himself as "the No. 1 earmarks guy in the U.S. Congress."[14] Inouye regularly passed earmarks for funding in the state of Hawaii including military and transportation spending.[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ Drudge, Michael W. Special Correspondent (1 August 2008). ""Pork Barrel" Spending Emerging as Presidential Campaign Issue". America.gov. United States Department of State. Archived from the original on 8 September 2008. Retrieved 14 August 2010.
  2. S2CID 154556676
    .
  3. JSTOR 2110914
    .
  4. ^ "Citizens Against Government Waste". Cagw.org. 2006. Archived from the original on July 14, 2008.
  5. ^ The story first appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Jan. 24 and Jan. 31, 1863. Hale, Edward Everett (1910). "The Children of the Public". The Man without a Country and Other Tales. Macmillan: 97–175. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. ^ Oxford English Dictionary[permanent dead link], pork barrel, draft revision June 2008. Retrieved October 22, 2008.
  7. ^ "Dictionary and Thesaurus | Merriam-Webster". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2016-04-15.
  8. ^ Maxey, Chester Collins (1919). "A Little History of Pork". National Municipal Review. 8 (10): 691–705.
    doi:10.1002/ncr.4110081006
    .
  9. ^ Quoted in: Volo, James M.; Volo, Dorothy Denneen (2004). The Antebellum Period. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 170.
    ISBN 978-0-313-32518-2
    .
  10. ^ Klein, Rick (August 6, 2006). "Big Dig failures threaten federal funding". The Boston Globe.
  11. ^ Rimer, Sara (30 December 2009). "In Boston, Where Change Is in the Winter Air". New York Times. Retrieved 17 November 2010.
  12. ^ $315 million bridge to nowhere (PDF). Taxpayers for Common Sense. February 9, 2005. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 25, 2008.
  13. doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2015.07.006
    .
  14. ^ Brown, Emma; Post, The Washington (18 December 2012). "Daniel Inouye was war hero, Senate deal maker, 'No. 1 earmarks guy'". The Bangor Daily News. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  15. ^ "Daniel K. Inouye: Campaign Finance/Money – Other Data – Earmarks 2010". www.opensecrets.org. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
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