North Dakota tightening the belt
The state may see drastic changes in federal earmarks and pork-barrel spending
Shane Zahrt
Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: News
Earlier this week, Barack Obama released his budget proposal of $3.8 trillion for the fiscal year 2011. Amid the varied reactions of his political allies, opponents, the mainstream media, watchdog groups, millions of political bloggers, and basically anyone with a Twitter account, only one thing remains clear: public budgeting is hard.
Not only is it difficult to even begin making sense of how to fund our broad and complex bureaucracy, but we tend assign the budgeting process the unrealistic expectation that it should simultaneously address many, often antithetical goals. For instance, in the midst of the current recession, we expect the federal budget to continue to promote economic recovery, create jobs, but still reduce our sky-high deficits.
Yet no discussion of wasteful spending is complete these days without addressing our most popular budgeting buzz phrases-pork barrel spending. We generally define a pork barrel project as one that benefits a specific geographical area, but are funded through tax revenues collected from every part of the country.
Such projects are not generally considered on their own merit, but are often tacked on by members of congress to larger budget and appropriations bills. The most familiar examples used in recent memory to criticize such projects have been Alaska's "bridge to nowhere," or Boston's much maligned "Big Dig."
David Flynn, a professor of economics at UND, discussed the political realities at play. "This is part of the way candidates make themselves desirable to the electorate-they've brought home projects." He added, "Is it the best use of taxpayer dollars? Maybe; maybe not. But if you go to the people in those areas, they find those dollars and the projects they finance of terrible importance."
To put it even more simply, we seem to only have a problem with the pork that is on someone else's plate. What someone outside of our state may point to as wasteful federal spending, might be a project that we in the Red River Valley consider vital.
Not only is it difficult to even begin making sense of how to fund our broad and complex bureaucracy, but we tend assign the budgeting process the unrealistic expectation that it should simultaneously address many, often antithetical goals. For instance, in the midst of the current recession, we expect the federal budget to continue to promote economic recovery, create jobs, but still reduce our sky-high deficits.
Yet no discussion of wasteful spending is complete these days without addressing our most popular budgeting buzz phrases-pork barrel spending. We generally define a pork barrel project as one that benefits a specific geographical area, but are funded through tax revenues collected from every part of the country.
Such projects are not generally considered on their own merit, but are often tacked on by members of congress to larger budget and appropriations bills. The most familiar examples used in recent memory to criticize such projects have been Alaska's "bridge to nowhere," or Boston's much maligned "Big Dig."
David Flynn, a professor of economics at UND, discussed the political realities at play. "This is part of the way candidates make themselves desirable to the electorate-they've brought home projects." He added, "Is it the best use of taxpayer dollars? Maybe; maybe not. But if you go to the people in those areas, they find those dollars and the projects they finance of terrible importance."
To put it even more simply, we seem to only have a problem with the pork that is on someone else's plate. What someone outside of our state may point to as wasteful federal spending, might be a project that we in the Red River Valley consider vital.
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