'Pork' traders unmasked as bloggers win Senate battle
By Alex Massie
The Scotsman
September 2, 2006
WASHINGTON _ SENATOR Tom Coburn had a simple question: "Why shouldn't the American people know where their money is being spent?" Because some of their representatives don't want them to, was the answer.
The Oklahoma Republican drafted a bill this summer that would create an online database allowing taxpayers to discover what the federal government was spending $2.5 trillion (£1.3 trillion) of their taxes on.
S.2590, also known as the federal funding accountability and transparency act, became the subject of Washington intrigue, however, when it emerged that the bill was being blocked secretly by at least one senator. A mystery senator placed a "secret hold" on S.2590: an arcane procedure by which any senator may block any piece of legislation merely by informing the party leader that he or she wants to place a "hold" on the bill. Such a move prevents it reaching the Senate floor for discussion, leaving the legislation in limbo.
The bill might have stayed there but for an unusual coalition of bloggers and online activists who pestered all 100 senators, demanding that they publicly clear their names so they could be crossed off the list of suspects. The game was afoot and before long the bloggers had declarations of innocence from 98 senators. The remaining two were Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska and West Virginia's veteran Democratic senator, Robert Byrd.
"They were such obvious suspects that, in a thriller novel, it never would have been them. But life is not a thriller novel, and the obvious suspects are usually guilty," said Professor Glenn Reynolds, who blogs at instapundit.com and is a co-founder of Porkbusters.org, a website dedicated to exposing wasteful government spending and shaming those who champion such profligacy.
Pork-barrel politics are a major issue in the United States, with the country running a huge budget deficit. An infamous example of such spending is the Iowa Indoor Rainforest Project - known as the pork forest by critics.
The Republican senator Chuck Grassley got $50 million for the project, attached, in the form "pork" spending usually takes, to the unrelated 2004 energy and water appropriations bill. The project has little environmental value. Even in the 2005 tsunami relief bill, Congress added $25 million for a fish hatchery in Montana. Many more examples of such "earmark" spending exist.
For the bloggers - conservative and liberal alike - there was rich irony in the fact that a bill designed to offer greater transparency was blocked by secretive means. To them, the saga reinforced their belief that Washington elites are out of touch with the voting public. "It's an insider game in which keeping the voters ignorant is a key strategy, on which both parties agree" says Prof Reynolds.
"This bill is a threat to anyone who wants to play the pork game with impunity," said Mr Coburn's spokesman. "The only reason to oppose this bill is to continue the culture of secrecy in Washington." Senator Stevens's spokesman told reporters that Mr Stevens simply wanted to wait for a proper "cost-benefit analysis" of the bill. "Senator Stevens wants to ensure this bill is not going to create another layer of bureaucracy," he added.
Mr Byrd's office released a statement saying that he "wanted time to read the legislation, understand its implications and see whether the proposal could be improved. Now that there has been time to better understand the legislation, Senator Byrd has released his hold."
Both senators have a well-earned reputation for pork-barrel politics.
"I want to be West Virginia's billion dollar industry," said Mr Byrd in 1990; an ambition he "succeeded handsomely" in fulfilling, according to the Almanac of American Politics.
Indeed, Mr Byrd, who was first elected to the Senate in 1958 and has been a fixture on Capitol Hill since 1952, received the dubious distinction of being crowned "King of Pork" by Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group that tracks federal spending.
One blogger on porkbusters.com described his hold thus: "I once saw a park latrine in West Virginia that I thought was not named after him, but someone told me the sign had fallen down."
Mr Stevens has been no less assiduous in diverting federal funds to his home state. He drew widespread ridicule last year when he attempted to secure more than $233 million for the now infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" to link Gravina Island (population 50) to the Alaskan mainland. He eventually got the money - even if the bridge was never built.
Now that both senators have been shamed into releasing their holds on the legislation, Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, has promised to bring the bill before the Senate for a vote when it returns from recess later this month.
Senator Tom Coburn
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2254 Fax: 202-228-3796
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