Fullerton Lawmaker Aims to Cut Budget’s ‘Pork’ : Politics: Rep. Ed Royce’s idea of bringing home the bacon is to wean his peers from expensive hometown projects. Some colleagues resent efforts.
WASHINGTON — Like baseball and May flowers, House members return to Washington this week to commence another springtime ritual. They’ll open the government’s books, setting off a flurry of deal-making to secure new courthouses, highway expansions or job-rich defense contracts for their districts.
But that tradition, if Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) has his way, may become as outdated as smoke-filled rooms. Royce wants to wean Congress’ appetite for “pork,†the spending that both fuels voters’ rage, when it’s considered wasteful, and wins their enthusiasm, if it brings a new facility or jobs to their neighborhoods.
Royce is co-chairman of the Porkbusters Coalition, a group of lawmakers and outside groups devoted to cutting federal spending. Aided by a network of like-minded House members on key committees, Royce will play the detective who combs through spending bills and alerts his colleagues when he smells fat in legislation.
“There is a great deal of waste in the process,†Royce said of past spending decisions. “We would like to get this back to where objectivity and fairness are the underlying criteria.â€
If successful, Royce’s effort will help the first Republican-led Congress in 40 years fulfill its promise to cut federal spending.
But it also puts the second-term congressman in an awkward position, forcing him to squeal on veteran lawmakers accustomed to Congress’ old ways. Past “porkbusters†received ridicule and scorn from their colleagues.
In addition, it’s hard to tell how voters, who reward politicians for bringing home the bacon, will react, said former Rep. Tim Penny (D-Minn.), the ex-chairman of the coalition.
“Everybody likes their own pork,†Penny said. “And the politicians who deliver the goods are reelected.â€
Royce said he’s been adequately warned, and, if necessary, he and co-chairman Rep. David Minge (D-Minn.) are prepared to go to the House floor to fight lawmakers’ pet projects.
“They’ve informed me it won’t be without ruffling feathers and antagonizing a few members,†Royce said.
The first step toward eliminating pork is defining it.
Obvious examples abound, such as the $500,000 in federal funds set aside a few years ago for a Lawrence Welk museum in North Dakota, a project viewed almost universally as frivolous.
Beyond just eliminating the absurd, Royce and other critics are singling out projects that have merit but have not traveled through the proper channels of congressional review. Typically, powerful members have inserted them in bills at the last minute.
The porkbusters have listed seven criteria. If a given item tests positive on three counts, the coalition considers it pork.
The indicators point to projects that have bypassed the appropriate authorizing committees--the panels whose members are supposed to be experts on their topics--or that have no relationship to the bill’s purpose.
Projects of “purely local interest, without national or regional importance†also break the porkbusters’ rules.
“If they violate this criteria,†Royce said, “we’re going to call them on the carpet.â€
The most abused area is the transportation budget, where members have frequently dipped for money to add lanes to a highway or build a bridge in their area.
Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee for the past six years, was not shy about his plan to be “West Virginia’s billion-dollar industry,†a goal he met in three years. Last year, he snagged 27% of all federal transit funding for West Virginia, a state with 0.7% of the U.S. population.
Now, Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), the new chairman of the House subcommittee that funds transportation programs, has vowed to stop setting aside money for local initiatives.
Taking the porkbusters’ suggestion, Wolf hopes instead to give a lump sum to state transit agencies, which can then spend the money on what they, rather than Washington officials, view as priorities, he said.
Under the new system, “all members will be treated fairly,†Wolf said. “In the past, fairness has not always been a part of the process.â€
A sense of unfairness led Penny and Rep. Harris W. Fawell (R-Ill.) to form the porkbusters coalition in 1991.
The two won some spending fights on the House floor and helped shine attention on pork practices. But they ran into entrenched opposition, said Penny, who retired from Congress last year out of frustration that his colleagues were unwilling to reduce federal spending.
“It’s really hard to get rid of this stuff,†Penny said, “because people are afraid to vote to cut someone else’s pork barrel project for fear of losing their own.â€
Penny, who has just written a book about the spending culture on Capitol Hill, said appropriators “resented†the porkbusters. “They didn’t like their handiwork being questioned by outsiders,†he said.
Last summer, Penny gave a speech on the House floor using words such as “pork†and “lard†to describe the budget process. Afterward, an Appropriations Committee member told him he was offended by the use of those words in reference to his work.
Fawell, who often said he felt like “a bee at a picnic,†was blasted by fellow members protective of their projects, and some said they would think twice before helping Fawell on future initiatives.
When the coalition succeeded in cutting a $7.7-million grant to a university in Kansas, the home of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the money was restored at a later time at Dole’s request.
Episodes like that are likely to continue, said Joe White, a research associate at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Senior members will still request favors and likely get them, he said.
And so long as Congress keeps constructing new buildings and handing out defense contracts, pork will remain, White said.
“It is simply not true that you can have a government in which politicians don’t pay attention to what’s built and where,†White said.
Others say Republicans already have proved they have the political will to cut pork. They’ve passed a bill that gutted $17 billion in projects funded last year, and approved rules changes that will make it easier to identify and remove pork.
They also vowed to hold open meetings, which may eliminate some of the horse-trading that goes on behind closed doors, said David Greenberg, a congressional analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
“In the past, (members) voted to close their meetings and they tended to make fairly controversial choices about taxing and spending,†Greenberg said. The decisions “tend to shrivel up in the sunlight.â€
And once the idea of spending favors has vanished, members won’t feel obligated to seek less-than-meritorious projects, Royce said, adding that the public will understand the benefit of distributing dollars more fairly.
“It relieves some of the political pressure in terms of bringing home the bacon,†he said.
Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter
Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond. In your inbox three times per week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
