Posted on 03/21/2006 2:28:49 PM PST by Small-L
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The seven-point criteria to classify a project as pork-barrel spending were developed in conjunction with the bipartisan Congressional Porkbusters Coalition. They are:
* The project was requested by only one member of Congress;
* The project was not specifically authorized;
* The project was not competitively awarded;
* The project was not requested by the President;
* The project greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
* The project was not the subject of a hearing; and,
* The project only serves a local or special interest.
Any project that meets one or more of these criteria is duly entered into CAGW’s Congressional Pig Book database. In 1991, CAGW cataloged 546 projects that amounted to $3.1 billion. Sadly, Mr. Chairman, under Republican leadership and the party that claims to be in favor of smaller government, pork-barrel spending has grown exponentially. In 1996, there were 958 projects that totaled $12.5 billion. In fiscal year 2005, appropriators stuffed 13,997 projects into the 13 appropriations bills at a cost of $27.3 billion, both record amounts and an increase of 31 percent and 19 percent, respectively, over fiscal year 2004.
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The explosion of pork-barrel spending over the last two decades has invited, at worst, corruption, and at best, conflicts of interest. It has become a form of legalized bribery.
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Earmarks also invite compounded wasteful spending. The following are just three examples of why even a single pork-barrel project cannot be justified. In fiscal year 2004, $3 million was provided to the First Tee program in two separate earmarks. According to its website, the First Tee program was created “To impact the lives of young people by providing learning facilities and educational programs that promote character development and life-enhancing values through the game of golf.” The organization has developed a National School Program, described as “a safe, fun and effective way to introduce school children to the basics in golf skills, etiquette and play.” Supporters of this program include the Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour, the U.S. Golf Association, the PGA, the Ladies PGA, Titleist, Callaway Golf, Nike, ClubCar, Golfweek, and Augusta National Golf Club. The First Tee program has sufficient spare funds to run ads during nationally televised professional golf events.
One earmark for first tee was for $1 million from the Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Education and its Character Education Program. The qualifications for that program are clearly identified on its website. Funds are intended solely for state and local education agencies, and they are disbursed through a competitive grant program. In addition, the grants are supposed to be limited to a maximum of $500,000. Based on these criteria, First Tee was not eligible for any of this funding.
The $1 million in funds did not show up in either of the House or Senate versions of the fiscal 2004 Labor/Health and Human Services/Education Appropriations Act. They were added in the conference. That $1 million meant fewer funds would be available for state and local education agencies for character education, to the detriment of students in other states. In addition, since the funds were not distributed within the parameters of an existing program, officials at the Department of Education could not determine whether or how First Tee spent the money in accordance with character education guidelines.
The other $2 million for First Tee came from the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice Programs’ Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). The COPS program began under President Clinton with the goal of adding 100,000 more police to the streets. It is safe to say that First Tee would not put one cop on the street.
In addition to the private and profitable supporters of the First Tee program, First Tee itself is part of the nonprofit World Golf Foundation (WCF), which lists Shell Corporation as a founding partner. Other sponsors of the WCF include: Enterprise Rent-a-Car, IBM, Nextel, and Wachovia. The WCF also runs the World Golf Hall of Fame. In 2004, the WCF received $37.8 million in revenue. Clearly, the WCF has the resources to find funding for First Tee programs without having to rely on handouts from taxpayers. Or perhaps First Tee could just run fewer ads on national television and use that money to pay for its own character education program.
One of the more absurd pork-barrel projects in CAGW’s lengthy list was $273,000 for the Blue Springs Youth Outreach Unit to combat Goth culture in Blue Springs, Missouri. This earmark was added in conference to the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2002.
Rep. Sam Graves had requested the funds to study Goth culture in Blue Springs because he claimed his constituents had asked him to fight for it. At that time, some newspaper editorials suggested the federal government could save a lot of money by simply buying Goth kids bright clothes and happy music. Others took the subject matter much more seriously. Rep. Graves issued a press release stating, “It is my hope that this funding will give the officers in the Youth Outreach Unit the tools they needed to identify Goth culture leaders preying on kids.” Blue Springs Youth Outreach Unit officer Colby Lalli told the press, “It’s not just the clothes they wear. We’re seeing kids in the unit, whether it be suicide or homicide, they’re just one more culture in our community that is at a big risk, and we need to deal with that.” Carrying this rhetoric even further, a spokesman for Rep. Graves told the Ledger-Enquirer that “35 kids have been identified with the Goth culture,” and “They’re doing self-mutilation, animal sacrifices, the sort or violent behavior and drug use that possibly could lead up to what happened at Columbine in 1999 with Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.”
But then a funny thing happened. Blue Springs Youth Outreach Unit staffers finally admitted that many of the claims they made in their grant proposal were unfounded, so they returned $132,000 of the remaining funds to the federal government.
Lastly, most Americans hoping it was a joke have probably heard about the $50 million to build an indoor rainforest in Iowa. A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal updated readers on the latest developments on the project and provides even more evidence why S. 1495 must become law. I am requesting that the editorial be submitted for the record.
In 2003, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) included $50 million for an indoor rainforest project in Coralville, Iowa, in the Energy Policy Act of 2003 bill. When that bill failed to pass in December, 2003, Iowans for Responsible Development, critics of the project, celebrated: "It is good news for us, good news for Iowa City and Coralville," he said. "I am glad this was turned down because it was a very mistaken project."
Unfortunately, that victory was short-lived. Apparently, the rainforest was so indispensable that Sen. Grassley added it to the Omnibus Appropriations Bill in late January 2004. It soon became the most ridiculed federal project since Boston’s Big Dig.
The original plan was for Iowa to have the world’s largest enclosed rainforest, spanning five acres. The enormous 20-story enclosure was supposed to look like a giant foil-covered caterpillar bordering Interstate Highway 80. Scenery for the indoor natural wonder would include suspended wooden bridges 100 feet in the air, hundreds of towering Brazilian beauty leaf, and American mahogany trees. Tourists would be able to wander among a myriad of activity centers, such as an aquarium, the rainforest, learning stations, and possibly even an IMAX-style theater in what the Des Moines Register describes as “a kind of prairie-meets-the-Amazon setting.”
A local businessman, Ted Townsend (heir to the Townsend meat-packing fortune), came up with this idea while contemplating his legacy on a treadmill. Since then, Townsend has worked to see that taxpayers will pay dearly for his dream to be realized. Original projections put the cost of the rainforest at $300 million; the project was scaled back to a more “reasonable” $225 million when it was included in the 2004 Omnibus Appropriations Bill. Townsend originally pledged a generous $10 million. However, the project would still have been $90 million short, and it must attract 1.1 million visitors annually to pay for itself. Coralville was ready to add $15 million for land for the complex, but no local governments were financing the project.
Water recycling and energy conservation have been promised, once the project is completed. Other than claiming the project will be an “ecological inspiration” and will utilize “environmentally focused systems,” no environmental benefits of building an indoor rainforest have been outlined.
This tropical boondoggle has some big name supporters, such as former Iowa Governor Bob Ray (R), who is the chairman of the institute Townsend founded to oversee the production of the rainforest. Ray imagines that it will solve the state’s “demographic problems” by drawing more people to move to Iowa. Ray also believes that mass quantities of retiring baby boomers will “crisscross the country” to visit the indoor rainforest. Senator Grassley claims that it will somehow help the University of Iowa.
The Midwest tropical project was expected to pump $187 million a year into Coralville’s economy, and turn Iowa into a “defining tourism destination” which the state currently lacks. David Oman, project director for the Iowa Environmental Project (the official name of the rainforest), hopes to attract travelers on “I-80 or I-380 en route to other destinations.” Oman’s plan is very ambitious since according to consultants, most travelers (57 percent) come to Iowa to visit relatives and friends; only a few (10 percent) come for entertainment.
Outside experts are dubious that Iowa’s rainforest will draw 1.1 million tourists per year to Coralville. According to the Des Moines Register, “Critic Eileen Robb wrote, ‘Perhaps the best that Iowans can hope for is that [the Iowa Environmental Project] will be purchased for pennies on the dollar in the future and put to a rational economic use, as happened in March 2003 to Colorado's Ocean Journey. The bankrupt $93 million Denver aquarium was recently purchased for just $13.6 million by Landry's seafood restaurant chain. Folks in Denver will now be able to watch their fish and eat them, too.”’
Raising the final $90 million to begin work on the rainforest may be the least of Oman’s worries. According to industry officials, attractions need to continually expand or add new features else attendance will drop dramatically. Supporters say they haven’t focused on the next stages, though plans call for an expansion five years after the planned 2008 opening.
Andrew Grossman, editor of Inside Magazine, heavily criticized Grassley’s rainforest project, and warned taxpayers not to be surprised “if Texas wins funding for an indoor glacier park in the 2005 budget.” At the time this funding was approved, CAGW wrote that “this project will do nothing for Iowa’s population, energy industry, or the environment, but will soak the taxpayers.”
According to the article by Michael Judge in the Thursday, March 9 wsj.com Opinion Journal that I have submitted for the record, the “struggle to parlay $50 million in federal grant money into a $150 million ‘world class’ environmental-education complex continues.” That amount is half of the original estimate provided in 2003.
Given recent revelations of how lobbyists work in Washington, it is no surprise nor is it illegal that that lead lobbyist for Mr. Townsend was John W. Conrad III, who once worked for Sen. Grassley. Mr. Conrad, according to the article, was paid $69,500 by Mr. Townsend to lobby his former boss for the $50 million earmark.
The article further notes that no private financing has been provided for the indoor rainforest. Sen. Grassley, in November, 2005, froze outlays in the project until it raised $50 million in matching funds. In fact, unless that occurs before December, 2007, the grant will be withdrawn. Included in that legislation was a provision that provided the project with portability. In other words, now the Environmental Project can shop the rain forest around the whole state, instead of just restricting the construction to Coralville. While Congress still seems intent on funding the indoor rainforest, Mr. Judge wrote that “Mr. Townsend is devoting more and more time to his ‘Great Ape Trust of Iowa,’ a research sanctuary he’s built in Des Moines to study the communications habits of primates really.”
The bankrupt $93 million Denver aquarium was recently purchased for just $13.6 million by Landry's seafood restaurant chain. Folks in Denver will now be able to watch their fish and eat them, too.”’
Something to think about....................
just remember, no gubmint program is ever a failure-
it's just underfunded.
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