Pork, Perspective and the Federal Budget

Pork-barrel spending has been a Washington tradition since, well, since back when people still bought pork products by the barrel. And to prove it, the new Congressional Pig Book is out from Citizens Against Government Waste. By their count, there were 11,610 projects that met CAGW's definition of pork, at a cost of $17.2 billion. Have a look yourself and see which project angers you most; the list includes such things as $3 million for First Tee, a program to build character through golfing; $1.9 million for the Charles Rangle Center for Public Service and $742,764 to olive fruit fly research.

But the big picture question is how much impact this has on the federal budget. And if you look at the numbers, the answer is "surprisingly little." The $17.2 billion in pork is a lot of money, certainly, but it's not that much in a total budget of $3.1 trillion. On it's own, cutting out pork won't even balance the budget (the White House projected a $400 billion deficit this year). And this is tiny compared to the long-term problems facing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

So why should we care about this part of politics-as-usual? In a word, trust. Most budget experts will tell you fixing the long-term problems involve controlling health care costs and coping with the retirement of the baby boomers. And that's going to require big, jarring change -- including, very likely, tax increases or spending cuts. But you're not going to be able to push those kinds of changes through without the public's support. And why should people make sacrifices if Washington is still handing out money to fruit fly research or the Lobster Institute?

The public opinion research we've done for Facing Up suggests that people are capable of grasping the budget problem and at least willing to consider tough choices to solve it. But they're hesitant to work on solutions unless they're convinced that the government is spending their money wisely. Right now, however, surveys show the public thinks up to half of every tax dollar is wasted. So pork projects may be costing the government far more in public trust than they are in money.