Ken Silverstein: The great American pork barrel - July 2005

[L. Coyote]

With more scandals focusing on earmarks and appropriations, this may interest readers.

==============================
The great American pork barrel
BY Ken Silverstein - July 2005
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/07/0080635

That appropriations bills have emerged as the premier venue for private interests also owes something to Tom DeLay, the embattled House majority leader. Traditionally, seats on the appropriations committee had been granted on the basis of seniority; but when the GOP won control of the House in 1994, DeLay (who himself served on the appropriations committee between 1987 and 2003) helped craft a new strategy under which the Republican seats were, as circumstances required, strategically assigned to “at risk” members; i.e., to those who had narrowly won office. This lent wobbly new lawmakers two vital assets: first, the ability to direct pork projects to their home districts, thereby impressing constituents with their ability to bring home federal monies; second, a fail-safe method of filling campaign war chests—namely, by tapping earmark seekers for donations.

The strategy has been eminently successful, as seen in the case of Anne Northup, a Republican from Kentucky who first won office in 1996 when she squeaked past a Democratic candidate by 1,299 votes. It was the first time in nearly three decades that a Republican had represented Kentucky's Third District, which encompasses the Democratic stronghold of Louisville. Northup was deemed to be highly vulnerable, but she was immediately assigned a slot on the appropriations committee and has held the seat ever since. In 1998, the first year she ran for reelection, Northup raised $1.9 million and won with 51.5 percent of the vote. By last November, Northup was vice-chair of one of the major pork-dispensing subcommittees—Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education—and Louisville was, not by coincidence, receiving more earmarked funds than the entire state of Delaware or Nebraska, states with no representation on the appropriations committees. Having raised $3.3 million, Northup sailed to reelection 60 percent of the vote. ...