Pork - It's What's For Dinner

Summary:
Guess what? Remember how Democrats said they were going to bring transparency and responsibility to pork spending? Well, they are doing the opposite. Surprised? Seriously though, check out the NY Times graphic - it sums it all up.

I am going to let you all in on a major lesson I just learned. Maybe you are all smarter than me and already knew this. But in case you didn't know it, here it goes: Whichever party is in control in Congress will abuse pork spending. This holds despite campaign promises of reform (by Democrats) or fiscal responsibility (by Republicans). In fact, not only will they abuse pork spending, but they will refuse options for transparency.

The NY Times has a truly absurd example from the bill to increase health coverage for children.

Despite promises by Congress to end the secrecy of earmarks and other pet projects, the House of Representatives has quietly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to specific hospitals and health care providers under a bill passed this month to help low-income children.

Instead of naming the hospitals, the bill describes them in cryptic terms, so that identifying a beneficiary is like solving a riddle. Most of the provisions were added to the bill at the request of Democratic lawmakers.

One hospital, Bay Area Medical Center, sits on Green Bay, straddling the border between Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, more than 200 miles north of Chicago. The bill would increase Medicare payments to the hospital by instructing federal officials to assume that it was in Chicago, where Medicare rates are set to cover substantially higher wages for hospital workers.

Lawmakers did not identify the hospital by name. For the purpose of Medicare, the bill said, “any hospital that is co-located in Marinette, Wis., and Menominee, Mich., is deemed to be located in Chicago.” Bay Area Medical Center is the only hospital fitting that description.

For more charming examples like this one, check out this graphic. I feel the need to point this out for two reasons. One, it really pisses me off that the Democrats campaigned loudly that they would come into office and end these practices and instead they just use their power to get the pork for themselves. The sad thing is that the Democrats did the same thing when it came to ethics reform - they made a lot of big speeches to humiliate Republicans, then didn't do anything significant.

But more importantly, I think it illustrates a valuable point. Neither party is actually more moral or responsible than the other party. People tend to forget this - purposefully or not. They yell loudly when the opposite party does it, but explain it away when their party is caught. Instead, it should be the opposite. You should yell the loudest when it is your party giving away money. But I suppose that expecting people to actually look at these issues objectively is naive.