Hell is Other Stuff

File this under my ongoing campaign against porkbusting. Before proceeding, please take a guess of the percentage of the federal budget that qualifies as "pork."

My contention has been that the recent fervor over pork barrel spending, or earmarking, or whatever other names they give it, is primarily a distraction. The idea seems to be getting the "limited government" base worked up about a minor issue so that they will overlook more pressing issues of fiscal solvency.

Recently the fervor has heated up again. When the 35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, it was inevitable that some pundits, politicians, and bloggers would use it to bolster their own worldview. An interesting post on Instapundit quoted John McCain denouncing, what else, "pork barrel, earmark projects." The Instapundit went on to say: "we have big infrastructure needs, and we're spending money on other stuff -- and members would rather have their name on something shiny and new than on unglamorous repairs."

For the purposes of this blog, it should be noted that he picked up on the shiny object meme. But more germane to my analysis is the denouncing of "other stuff" that money was being spent on, presumably "pork," instead of repairs to this bridge and other infrastructure needs. (The fact that this tragedy involved a bridge was also certainly a boon to the porkbusting crowd.) The criticism of pork becomes quite confusing at this juncture. If we could go back in time and divert funds from other pork projects to the Minneapolis bridge, what would be the result? Certainly several lives could have been saved. But for the porkbusting crowd, the problem would still lurk, for spending on local infrastructure certainly qualifies as pork. Regardless of the validity of the local public good argument for infrastructure such as roads, it is an enormous stretch to claim that such spending promotes the general welfare of the nation.

Another related porkbusting story, published in the NY Times the same day as this Instapundit post (though not linked by The Pundit), tells us that after pork reform was instituted, members of Congress are using the increased transparency as a means of bragging to their constituents. But another story from a few days prior (also not linked by The Pundit) brings this criticism to my broader point: the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Iraq War could cost $1 trillion. Based on my nonscientific analysis, there seems to be a huge overlap between those supporting the Iraq War and those on the Porkbusting Bandwagon.

And now we will return to my question in the first paragraph of this blog post. According to the anti-pork group Citizens Against Government Waste the fiscal 2007 spending on pork projects is $13.2 billion, while the federal budget is $2.77 trillion. In other words, pork barrel spending is approximately 0.5% of federal spending. Perhaps economists should start using pork barrel spending as a calibrating question in addition to foreign aid (see Table 16). Pork as currently defined is an extremely minor component of federal spending, but expanding the definition (as I have done in previous posts) would threaten too many grand projects that the Porkbusting Crowd loves.