Lincoln Chafee: He’s our $61 Million Dollar Man. Why, you ask? No, not because his personal fortune is currently valued at $61 Million, although that is an amusing coincidence.

He is our $61 Million Dollar Man because he (and our other US Senator, Jack Reed, and our Congressmen Patrick Kennedy and Jim Langevin) brought in $60,953,500 in federal pork dollars for 2005.

Pork Spending: What it is and Why You Should Care

With all the Rhode Island senate race talk about pork, I’ve tried to do some research about it to help Rhode Islanders and those in other states understand what’s at stake.

Pork is a special kind of government grant funding. It does not come through the regular channels, but is approved by being tacked on to appropriation bills, often in closed doors conferences. The following is from Citizens against Government Waste:

Pork-barrel projects are often “tacked-on� by well-placed members of Congress, usually those that sit on the House or Senate Appropriations Committees. This removes accountability and further compromises a budget process that is already on the brink of chaos. Without authorization, or a competition, or a request from the agency, there is no oversight or scrutiny to separate the good projects from the bad. There is also no sure way of knowing who was responsible for including the project, nor is there any follow-up to see whether the money gets used for the stated purpose, and if it does, whether the project accomplishes its intended goal. Most importantly, there is no limit to the amount of projects included in the federal budget. The practice also assures that a disproportionate amount of projects will go to the states and districts of appropriation committee members.

Citizens Against Government Waste takes the position that money should stay locally, and that appropriations should go through the correct channels. This is an ideological stronghold for Republicans. Nonetheless, as a mostly-Democratic-leaning Independent, I can see why, theoretically, it makes sense. But from a pragmatic standpoint, my question is: can Rhode Island afford to forego its pork?

If this money is used the way it should be, it will pay for many important projects. You can view these projects and the money they receive by going here. But one of the problems with pork funding, as described by the CAGW quote above, is the lack of oversight and accountability once the money is disbursed.

A much larger share of federal tax dollars that come into Rhode Island are not considered “pork” since they are not add-ons, but go through the official process of federal funding appropriations. For 2003, the Tax Foundation reported that Rhode Island gets back in federal spending $1.06 on every dollar we pay in federal tax. In other words, we got back a little more than we put in. Did some of this come through pork? Yes, a small percentage was returned to the state in pork.

Would it be better if that $61 million we got in pork just stayed in the state in the first place? Probably, but the tax system is not going to be overhauled in a week or even a year. Measures supported by CAGW to stave off pork aim at making it more transparent and keeping the tack-on process from happening behind closed doors. Again, this is sensible, but for now, I would argue that we still need to join the fray and advocate for worthy pork projects.

This graph is from CAGW. You can see why this is a growing concern, quite literally. That number on the 2005 column is 27.3 billion. Note that the big jump in pork spending from 2004 to 2005 happened under Republican-dominated leadership in every segment of our government. Note the other biggest jump in pork spending, from 1999 to 2000, when George W. Bush was first elected.

I am wholeheartedly in favor of reducing federal taxes, particularly taxes on the middle class and working poor. But at the same time, I want to make sure that what taxes we pay as a state come back to us. With the exception of Homeland Security grants, much of which have been spent mainly on police and fire equipment of questionable need, these monies (grants for schools or social services, grants to help pay for public works projects, healthcare research, improved technology for libraries and police) serve to offset expenses that would otherwise be paid out of Rhode Island’s property tax burden, which is already one of the highest tax burdens in the country, or out of the state’s funds, which are in a severe deficit for this year.

Also of note about pork is the question of whether those Republicans in Congress who say they are against pork are actually against it, or do they mainly want to cut services that help the poor. Here is an article by Matthew Yglesias on that topic entitled Waste Not, Work Not.