This Texas Democrat, up for re-election May 1, has passionately denounced the deficit. “First government must sacrifice, and then we should ask the American people to sacrifice,” he said. Yet Krueger persuaded Bill Clinton to reverse a Pentagon decision to halt production of additional F-16 fighter aircraft. Krueger called a press conference in February to trumpet his success in winning 24 new orders for the $25 million aircraft, “saving 3,000 jobs … in Ft. Worth.” Krueger and other Texas Democrats also persuaded Clinton to reverse a preliminary decision to kill the NASA space station, a $31 billion technomarvel that is rich in Texas jobs but no longer has any real justification. The Superconducting Super Collider, yet another Texas project, was also taken off Clinton’s potential kill list to help boost Krueger’s re-election bid. How does Krueger justify the pork? “That’s a very cynical attitude,” Krueger says. “I don’t think we have to look first at cutting out certain programs. I think we can change the way government works,”
The Alaska Republican voted against Clinton’s budget-reduction package because “I’ve never seen [spending] as far out of control as it is today.” Yet Alaska annually gets more federal spending per capita than any other state. Stevens, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, is a master at lifting additional bacon out of the federal larder. Last year Stevens appropriated $25 million in funds for a supercomputer at the University of Alaska-to be used, among other things, to find a way to tap the northern lights for electric power. Physicists say that’s impossible. Stevens concedes “it’s wacky. But I don’t think it’s entirely beyond the realm of-of sane thought.”
As a five-term congresswoman before her election to the Senate last fall, the California Democrat fought to reduce military spending and has been a sometime critic of the use of force. But with deep cuts in the military now planned, Boxer opposes the closing of eight naval bases and shipyards in her home state. Boxer has not protested the closures in principle-only that California is taking “a disproportionate hit.” Boxer argues that California’s unemployment level is already at 9.8 percent and the state can’t stand all the new joblessness. “We are willing to take our fair-share hit,” Boxer says. “Since we’ve had about, at the peak, 21 percent of the [defense] budget, I could see us taking 25 percent of the hit, instead of 50 percent at one time.” But Keith Cunningham, a base-closing expert at Business Executives for National Security, says this round of cutbacks was aimed at the navy, which had earlier been mostly spared, and California is where the West Coast bases are. And by the time the bases are actually closed-in three to five years-California should be out of the recession.
The South Carolinian has been a leader among Senate Democrats in fighting for a balanced budget. The celebrated Gramm-Rudman-Hollings spending caps, passed during the 1980s, did put some damper on spending. But Hollings also is a member of the Appropriations Committee, and Citizens Against Government Waste calculates that he’s used his position to earmark $52 million over the past three years for pork projects in his home state. One program that’s come back to haunt him is $705,000 allocated to create a national historic site out of 28 acres and a house once thought to be owned by Charles Pinckney, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Now it appears that the house was built after Pinckney died. Hollings refused to be interviewed for this article. Jerry Rogers at the National Park Service says the project will go ahead “interpreted” as an 18th-century farmhouse, but not Pinckney’s.
“We’ve got to cut spending,” says the New York Republican. “What’s this space station? What the hell do you need a space station for? That’s $32 billion . . . You can cut the Agriculture Department that’s now at [120,000]. Cut ’em down to 25,000 people and still do the job. Cut ’em!” But D’Amato is also one of the Senate’s premier practitioners of pork. The New York Botanical Garden, the Public Library, Roberts Wesleyan College and the Council for Jewish Organizations are all recipients of federal money, thanks to D’Amato. He’s been so successful in earmarking highway, bridge and transportation projects for New York-$41 million last year alone-that he’s been long known as Senator Pothole. D’Amato is unabashed, offering the ultimate rationale to square his circle. “I’m saying it’s time that we got spending under control. But Senator Pothole? Absolutely! If you’re going to build a cheese factory on the moon-OK, I’m going to fight it. But if you decide to build that cheese factory … my dairy farmers in New York get a chance to sell their milk. I am what I am.”
In other words, all spending, like all politics, is local. Pass the pork.
