Pork barrel

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The term pork barrel, while literally meaning a barrel in which pork is kept, is more commonly used as a political metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for projects that are intended primarily to benefit particular constituents or campaign contributors. This usage originated in American English with reference to gifts of salt pork in a barrel by slave-owners to their slaves.

1 Definition
2 Examples
3 Use of the term outside the United States
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Definition

The term pork barrel politics refers to government spending that is intended to benefit constituents of a politician in return for their political support, either in the form of campaign contributions or votes. The term originated early in American history, when slaves were sometimes given a barrel of salt pork as a reward and had to compete among themselves to get their share of the handout.^[1]^[2] Typically, it involves funding for government programs whose economic or service benefits are concentrated in a particular area but whose costs are spread among all taxpayers. Public works projects and agricultural subsidies are the most commonly cited examples, but they do not exhaust the possibilities.^[3] Pork barrel spending is often allocated through last-minute additions to appropriation bills.

In 1991, Citizens Against Government Waste and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition developed seven criteria for a project to qualify as pork:^[4]

Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
Not specifically authorized;
Not competitively awarded;
Not requested by the President;
Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
Serves only a local or special interest.

[edit] Examples

One of the earliest examples of pork barrel politics in the United States was the Bonus Bill of 1817, which was introduced by John C. Calhoun to construct highways linking the East and South of the United States to its Western frontier using the earnings bonus from the Second Bank of the United States. Calhoun argued for it using general welfare and post roads clauses of the United States Constitution. Although he approved of the economic development goal, President James Madison vetoed the bill as unconstitutional. Since then, however, U.S. presidents have seen the political advantage of pork barrel politics. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first appearances of the term in the late 19th century:^{[citation needed]}

1873 Defiance (Ohio) Democrat 13 Sept. 1/8 Recollecting their many previous visits to the public pork-barrel,..this hue-and-cry over the salary grab..puzzles quite as much as it alarms them. 1896 Overland Monthly Sept. 370/2 Another illustration represents Mr. Ford in the act of hooking out a chunk of River and Harbor Pork out of a Congressional Pork Barrel valued at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

One of the most famous pork-barrel projects was the Big Dig in Boston, Massachusetts. The Big Dig was a project to take a pre-existing 3.5-mile (5.6 km) interstate highway and relocate it underground. It ended up costing $14.6 billion, or over $4 billion per mile.^[5]

Pork-barrel projects, or earmarks, are added to the federal budget by members of the appropriation committees of United States Congress. This allows delivery of federal funds to the local district or state of the appropriation committee member, often accommodating major campaign contributors. To a certain extent, a member of Congress is judged by their ability to deliver funds to their constituents. The Chairman and the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations are in a position to deliver significant benefits to their states.

[edit] Use of the term outside the United States

In other countries, the practice is often called patronage, but this word does not always imply corrupt or undesirable conduct. The metaphor pork-barrel has spread to the varieties of English used in other countries – such as the UK, Australia, and New Zealand – that have parliamentary democracies (as opposed to presidential systems).^[6] Similar expressions, meaning "election pork", are used in Danish (valgflæsk), Swedish (valfläsk), and Norwegian ("valgflesk"), where they mean promises made before an election.^[7]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

^ The Lanahan Readings in the American Polity, 3rd Edition
^ Cooke, Alistair (29 December 2003). Pork barrel politics. Letter from America. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved on 2008-04-02.
^ for example: economist and three-term U.S. senator Paul H. Douglas wrote: "Each year (Senator Kenneth) McKellar's great hour came when he brought up his Rivers and Harbors Appropriations bill, universally known as 'the pork barrel.'" - Douglas, Paul H. (1971). In the Fullness of Time. New York: Harcout Brace Javonanovich, Inc, page 252.
^ Citizens Against Government Waste:
^ Big Dig failures threaten federal funding - The Boston Globe
^ House of Representatives, New Zealand: Speakers' Rulings 1867-2005 inclusive (pdf). Retrieved on 2008-04-07. “It is not a contempt to solicit public funds for programmes in return for one’s vote (‘‘pork-barrel politics’’). But it is a contempt to seek a benefit for oneself or for other persons close to oneself as the price of one’s vote.”
^ Nationalencyklopedin, NE Nationalencyklopedin AB. Article Valfläsk