What do you get when you cross so-called “deficit hawk” Senator Richard Shelby and a $2.6 million North Alabama pork project? You get an empty tourist tram that traveled for 4 weekends – on a specially-built private road – between the US Space & Rocket Center and the Huntsville Botanical Gardens. The tram’s “trial run” consisted of 3 trips/day for a total of 8 days – that’s $325,000 per trip. We can’t break the cost out by passenger because nobody from LIA ever saw anyone ride.

This project required construction of a private, landscaped, mile-long road between the space museum and the gardens. Shelby earmarked federal transportation tax dollars to build a road the public isn’t allowed to drive on, ostensibly to avoid “tourist congestion” on a public road that isn’t congested on weekend days (when most tourists visit either attraction.)

I actually wrote about federal funding for this project over three years ago, noting that the federal government has no business with this sort of frivolous, local spending.  My guess is neither of the two attractions in question, nor the city would pay for an expensive dedicated tourist tram (because it is an obvious waste), but no one turns down “free” federal money.

Ok, I don’t think the good liberals at Left in Alabama have suddenly become anti-government waste conservatives.  I mean the whole premise of Obama’s stimulus spending is to throw money into the economy with reckless abandon, funding good and bad projects alike, and they support that effort wholeheartedly.  And they frequently lament the lack of mass transit in the state of Alabama.  Even better – the tram is electric.  Green!  The existing buses that service the tourist loop are diesel.  Here we have liberals opposing an electric mass transit system in favor of smoggy, diesel buses. So what gives?  Opportunism.  They’re so eager to shill for the Democratic Senate nominee, What’s His Name, that they are actually wiling to stand up and applaud arguments that they would normally look upon with derision.  It is both sad and funny.  Wouldn’t it be refreshing if they would apply the same degree of fiscal scrutiny to comparably wasteful projects favored by Democrats, including the President?

U.S. Representative Jim Marshall is a Georgia Democrat and a member of his party’s Blue Dog Coalition, a group of lawmakers bound by a desire to restrain federal spending. The Blue Dogs have something else in common: a fondness for funding pet projects.

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Overall, Blue Dogs submitted more than 2,500 individual earmarks totaling some $20 billion. That underscores the conflict between their eagerness to bring federal money home and the coalition’s criticism of the budget as laden with pork.

“It’s really hard to smack government’s wrists with the one hand while the other hand is looking for as much earmark cash as you can grab and bring home to your district,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based public-interest group.

U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today announced that the Transportation Security Administration has awarded $27,500,000 to the Huntsville International-Carl T. Jones Field Airport for aviation safety.

Because, you know, an airport in Huntsville is a pressing federal concern.  I really wish a legitimate candidate would run against him.

Out here in the hinterlands, of course, some people see such earmarks, for public buildings, infrastructure and support of colleges and universities as essential to progress.

So it was somewhat refreshing to hear Tuscaloosa U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby give a full-throated defense of all the money he has brought back to Alabama in his long career, a career that has made him one of the most powerful members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where most of the vast amount of money spent every year by Congress is divvied up.

Shelby told a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in West Alabama this past Friday that he apologizes to no one for the bacon he has brought home in the form of specific earmarks for projects all over Alabama.

Shelby, who had been in Congress since 1979 and in the Senate since 1985, even boasted that he had been responsible for the allocation of more than $500 million for the University of Alabama and that his goal would be to bring $1 billion in earmarks to the Capstone before he leaves Washington.

I’ll be blunt: I don’t like pork spending.  Not one bit.  To hear Shelby boast about wanting to secure $1 billion in pork for the town he lives in that is also home to his alma mater just makes me ill.

Sigh…

Last year, while in campaign mode, Barack Obama ceremoniously co-sponsored an amendment that would issue a one year moratorium on earmarks.  We’ll see if he makes good on his campaign rhetoric and follows through on that pledge.  His track record thus far does not give me cause to be optimistic, though.  He’s already breaking his promise to go “line by line” through the federal budget and eliminate waste.

WASHINGTON, DC Friday, January 16, 2009– U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today announced that the Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration has awarded $648,693 to Centre Piedmont-Cherokee County Regional Airport for road paving.

The existing road to the airport is gravel.  Clearly the access road to a little airport in Cherokee County (pop. 23,988) is a federal concern.

Earmarks are insignificant as a dollar amount in relation to our total federal spending (entitlement programs are the lion’s share).  However, earmarks are what the military calls a “force multiplier.”  They act to dramatically increase federal spending far beyond their own cost.  How, you ask?

When presented with a bloated spending bill many legislators will refuse to support it.  But when a pork project (or multiple pork projects) for their district is inserted into the bill their opposition softens and they may switch to support.  This clearly makes no sense because the total amount of money to be spent is now higher than the previous amount that was objectionable.  Voila!  Total spending goes out of control as politicians vote in favor of massive spending bills for a pittance of local money.

Politicians do this because they sincerely believe that pork will help them get reelected.  This is where you come in.  Every voter needs to recognize that all of those pork projects and structures bearing the names of elected officials are nothing more than taxpayer funded campaign material.  When you see a picture of a smiling politician presenting a community grant in the paper you need to think about the reason he/she is smiling.  He is smiling because he knows that every sucker voter seeing that picture paid for that advertisement.  Some recent polling indicates that voters may be getting wise to this racket, but that message needs to be clearly articulated to the elected officials.

Another dangerous aspect of pork spending is that it can be a source of corruption.  The way that the government is supposed to spend money is that Congress authorizes the expenditure of funds.  Career professionals, not politicians, in the Executive Branch dispassionately determine specifically how that money should be spent to best achieve the nation’s objectives.  There is considerable oversight into this process to try to prevent corruption.  For earmarks, though, there is considerably less oversight, which has led to numerous cases of alleged and actual corruption over the years – most recently Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska.  Legislators are able to quietly, covertly tuck earmarks into bills without even subjecting them to the consideration of the full legislative body, much less the public.

The hidden nature of earmarks creates a fertile breeding ground for legislators to provide favors for campaign contributors, friends, family, and, of course, themselves.  Often it is extremely difficult to find a smoking gun that defines a quid pro quo transaction.  In the case of Ted Stevens he hasn’t been charged with any quid pro quo (yet), he’s only been charged with insufficient disclosure of gifts.  Occasionally a legislator is as sloppy as Duke Cunningham was and leaves a concrete trail of their malfeasance.  All too often we are only able to marvel at the extent to which big contributors “just happen” to get huge chunks of earmarked money.  Funny how that works out.

Even if there isn’t a whiff of ethical conflicts surrounding an earmark it still likely to be wasted money.  Again, revisit the way money is supposed to get spent in the government.  Career professionals – people who dedicate their working lives to studying focused issues – are supposed to decide how to best spend the limited taxpayer resources that they receive.  Legislators do not have the specialized training (or the time) necessary to make informed decisions about, for example, where bridges should be built or which weapons our military truly needs.  Earmarks result in inefficient spending.  Period.

Nationally, the topic of earmarks has exposed a fracture in the Republican Party (see below for an excerpt of this column).  The party must choose from the likes of Ted Stevens and Richard Shelby, both unabashed porkers, and Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, both unapologetic fiscal conservatives.  I think the correct choice couldn’t be clearer.  The porkers helped to grow government under Republican control of both Congress and the White House despite pretending to be fiscal conservatives.  Stark fact: as of 2006 (when the GOP lost Congress) the Bush administration grew government more than either Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter.  The Republican Party MUST choose to follow the path of true fiscal restraint – to include substantial earmark reform or outright elimination – or it faces the very real possibility of officially allowing the Democrats become the party of small government (as ridiculous as that might sound).

From the aforementioned Wall Street Journal column:

The Republican Party is facing what Ronald Reagan called “a time for choosing.” A real argument is raging over how much it should turn its back on the bad habits that cost it control of Congress in 2006.

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Mr. Coburn notes that many members feel compelled to vote for bloated spending bills, fearing their local projects will be stripped out.

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One reason Congress now has even lower approval numbers than in 2006 is the failure of Democrats to make good on their vow to clean up the earmark process. A “moratorium” on earmarks has been quietly set aside; and the Congressional Research Service has been directed by Congressional leaders to no longer respond to requests from members on the size, number or background of earmarks. “Democrats claim the earmarks will now be transparent, but they’re taking away the very data that lets us know what’s really happening,” says South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. Democratic earmark reform, concludes Mr. Coburn, “not only failed to drain the swamp, but gave the alligators new rights.”

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They may not like it, but Mr. Coburn is showing Republicans how the GOP can return to its small government roots. Consider Ronald Reagan, who in 1987 vetoed a highway bill because it had a mere 121 earmarks in it.

Reagan quoted a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1796, warning that allowing Congress to spend federal money for local projects would set off “a scene of scramble among the members (for) who can get the most money wasted in their State, and they will always get most who are meanest.” Reagan didn’t think that represented good government or good politics. Republicans today should heed his warning.

One of the bright spots of having John McCain as the party’s nominee is that he is a proven fiscal conservative with a track record as a pork buster.  Republicans can cite numerous reasons why they aren’t excited about McCain for one issue or another, but when it comes to respect for the taxpayer’s money he has few peers.  Barack Obama has not shown anywhere near the same inhibition when it comes to spending our money on pet projects.

In Alabama’s 5th Congressional District the Republican nominee, Wayne Parker, supports a one year moratorium on earmarks.  He recognizes the corrupting effect of earmarks (he discusses earmark reform under the “Ethics in Government” category), although he stops short of pledging to abstain from earmarks.  On the Democrat side Parker Griffith has already staked out his position while serving as a state senator.  Just a couple of weeks ago he put our tax dollars to work, presenting a $5,000 state check to a local organization.  Congratulations to all of us for buying him some complimentary press coverage, as we have done many times in the past.

Not that it would matter, but Shelby should read this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

The Club for Growth recently conducted a nationwide poll on government spending, and the results were exactly the opposite of what most politicians have been saying for years. Voters are fed up with Washington’s out-of-control spending. Politicians aren’t representing the will of the people when they bring home the bacon. They are really representing the will of their special-interest cronies. And it’s not just conservative voters who feel that way. Voters across the board have finally found something they can agree on even if their elected officials can’t: It’s time to cut the fat, even if that means fewer projects for their own districts.

Conducted in late June, the poll surveyed 800 voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46%. Likely voters were asked the following question: “All things being equal, for whom would you be more likely to vote for the U.S. Congress: 1) A candidate who wants to cut overall federal spending, even if that includes cutting some money that would come to your district or 2) A candidate who wants to increase overall spending on federal programs, as long as more federal spending and projects come to your district?”

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Voters across America don’t see their elected officials “listening” and “providing.” Instead they see spending that is wasteful, prone to corruption, arbitrary and inefficient. They see Republican congressmen like Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney hauled off to jail for earmark-related corruption. They see Congress lavishing their hard-earned tax dollars on such projects as the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska, the Mule and Packers Museum in California, and the Lobster Institute in Maine. Even worthy-sounding earmarks like a local science lab are viewed with suspicion. After all, these projects are not subject to competitive review and bidding, and they are designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

As usual the Pig Book is chock full of programs so ridiculous it is hard to imagine our elected officials would have the gall to fund them. Cricket research. A lobster institute that lists as one of its major accomplishments a lobster dog “bisque-it.” Nearly $2 million for the “Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service” inserted by… you guessed it: Rep. Charles Rangel. A jazz center.

It would be funny if it weren’t true.