This seems to be about personal retribution to me. That is the point of the article, and I think that making it an argument about "smaller government" is a diversion.
You don't think there was any personal retribution involved? It just happened to be that all the wasteful road projects were in these 21 districts.
There's nothing personal about it.
Istook made it clear that if reps wanted Amtrak funding it would count as part or all of their transportation allotment. The reps went ahead and chose Amtrak and their only defense is that they "didn't believe" Istook would follow through. Well, he's on honest guy, and he followed through.
The reps got most of the Amtrak funding they wanted and lost most of the other projects they wanted. Sounds fair to me!