Which is fine–I want them to be informed on subjects they’re voting on, don’t you? My problem is that the results of all this staffed-out research should be clearer to voters. Here’s where I agree (if I do) with McCain, I think: a lot of these riders seem unjustified to me. (Many of them, of course, are things I would like the governemnt to fund, but I think they can be voted on on their own merits, and if more public education is needed, then so be it.) But I should be able to review someone’s voting record and judge it for itself, not as a small part of a comlicated, deliberately obscure process that I can’t tell if I support or not.
So this pork – is it new spending to support fishermen and wooden arrow makers and the rum business, etc. or is it tax cuts (or continuation of tax cuts) for those groups?
It is NOT new spending – there was no money appropriated in the bill, only continuations of expiring tax provisions.
But as in all things, pork is in the eyes of the beholder. Do targeted tax cuts qualify as “pork”? There’s no spending, but the government is now not collecting revenues it would have otherwise. If tax cuts for industry are “pork,” how about tax cuts to a limited class of people (say, homeowners)? What about the billions of dollars in guaranteed loans that Congress approved in an earlier bill to auto makers, is that pork? It’ll have to be paid back, but at a rate and terms that Detroit could not have gotten in the private market.
Personally, I think “pork” is a pretty worthless term. It’s just a mindless perjorative that gives people something to tsk-tsk about without really having to really think about how we should make decisions regarding how tax dollars are raised and spent.
Does everyone agree? If so, this is a very damning statement (IMO) about McCain’s campaign. He’s a making “a mindless pejorative” into one of the major themes of his campaign, distracting us with silly stuff that’s just become a standard yet harmless part of our legistlative process.
I say as someone who, until this thread, conceded that “pork” was a strong issue for McCain–now I’m starting to question whether I just don;t understand the issues I support him on. Is there anyone willing to take the stance I came into this thread taking (and which still makes sense to me, somewhat), that “pork” wastes tax dollars, it’s unnecessary to the law-making process, that it could be outlawed (by mandating that riders be outlawed), that more transparancy would result as well as savings, etc.?
I’m sorry, subsidies for Wooden Arrow makers? What is this, the 15th Century?
“As the Honourable Member for Little Dunny On The Woad, I must beseech my colleagues and His Majesty to pass the Wooden Arrow Subsidies Act; as the livelihoods of the Bowyers and Fletchers in my constituency are threatened by the recent advances in Gunsmithing and firearms technology, and without a robust Bow and Fletching industry, we are at grave risk of being unable to maintain our present position of dominance in that area!”
Put me in the “Bills should only related to the subject named in the title” camp- i.e. you can’t have a bill entitled Public Transport Subsidy Act 2008 and then have Clause LXVII(a) be “$10 million is allocated to the Arts Development Fund.”
It shouldn’t work that way (and fortunately it doesn’t here in Australia). Subsidising Public Transport and Developing The Arts are two completely separate issues and need two separate bills, debates in parliament, and so forth.
I can only see the US system of attaching “riders” causing more problems than it solves- Making the Congressional system way more complicated that it needs to be (huge staffs of advisors and hangers-on) and providing ammunition for opponents in debates- “My opponent voted against a bill which would have outlawed the use of obscenities near kittens!” when that was a 1-line part of a bill that would flood several historical towns to make way for a speedboat racing course, and so forth.
As long as we’re still in GQ, I think it’s fair to say that this kind of manipulation is present to some degree in virtually every campaign. Both presidential candidates, for example, are going on about “foreign oil,” which sounds like a bad thing, and something we ought to be able to fix, until you actually find out about how a borderless commodity like this actually works. A claim like this (and, again, McCain is hardly alone in engaging in this sort of semantic chicanery) is easily grasped and makes superficial sense (“of course the government spends too much, on silly things”), and is hard to argue against without getting into eye-glazing specifics that don’t fit well into a thirty-second TV commercial (and that would take us out of GQ). Same as every other political campaign.
A big deal has been made about this, but I just heard an interview on N.P.R. with the wooden arrow merchant in question. The story is that at some point a few years ago, the tariff on arrows was changed from a percentage to a flat per arrow amount. This basically put most of the people who sold wooden arrows made for children’s use out of business, because the profit margin on children’s wooden arrows is much smaller than it is for other arrows. That’s the reason for the tax relief – basically the tax isn’t appropriate for this particular class of arrows.
Essentially, “pork” is a red herring, because:
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It’s hard to define pork – a lot of things labeled pork are things that are actually needed somewhere.
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Basically, anything in the budget is minor compared to things like Medicare, Social Security, and things like the Iraq War and the Wall Street bailout. “Pork” really doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.
This is a complicated issue. I think most people can agree with the following things:
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When a Senator (or House member) seeks to appropriate Federal funding for their home state or their district, generally their constituents are being well served. So while it may not be something a person from another state or district cares for, the only people who get a say in the reelection of Senator A or Congressman A are the people who are their constituents–also the people who directly benefit from their representative rolling Federal dollars their way.
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As long as the Federal government is collecting such a high amount of taxes, some of that revenue must be spent back on local and state initiatives which collectively help the country as a whole (building infrastructure in one state actually has a positive benefit for the whole country in the grand scheme of things.)
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Some of this spending is justified, and a good use of tax dollars.
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Some of it is wasteful, a bad use of tax dollars.
The crux of the problem is identifying which type of spending is “justified, and a good use of tax dollars” and which is “wasteful, a bad use of tax dollars.” A bridge to nowhere I think most people can agree is a poor use of tax dollars.
Of course, all four of your main points are unarguable, almost self-defining. Any money collected by the Federal government must be spent in one or more specific states, for example. The Feds cannot build a military base which is not built in a specific location, nor can they order hammers from “America” generally.
So let’s limit this discussion to the kind of Federal expenditures that appear in riders, shall we? No one is arguing that all Federal moneys are wasteful, but this seems to be a place where much pork ends up. At least, that’s what I understand most of McCain’s complaints to be against.
But it’s been argued (above) that if riders were to be disallowed, then Senators wold simply arrange for the same result by offering to vote for each other’s separate, wasteful projects in exchange for support on their own separate, wasteful projects . Me, I think this would be an improvement, leading to greater transparancy, I think. (Since riders seem ok in Senate bills but not House bills, it’s obviously not an impossible goal to strive for.)
The usage is different in state and local government. Earmarks are appropriated for a specific project, but the source of the earmark is very specific, too; usually a new tax or source of revenue, or the entirety of an increase in an existing revenue source. For example:
[ul][li]The revenue from the new state lottery will be earmarked towards school construction.[/li][li]The two cent per gallon increase in gasoline tax will be earmarked towards development of rapid transit.[/li][*]Impact fees paid as a part of the building permit process will be earmarked towards road improvements that will accommodate the increasing development in the area.[/ul]
I wonder how people might feel about the following riders:
- The Department of Defense Appropriations bill
- The Military Construction/Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill
- $22 billion in hurricane and Midwest flood disaster recovery
- Funds to continue government operations for all Federal agencies except the DOD, VA, and Department of Homeland Security.
All of these were riders to a homeland security appropriations bill signed into law on September 30. Why didn’t they get individual votes? Because the time it would take to call up, debate, and vote on each one would have meant that they would not have been passed before the beginning of the fiscal year. That would have meant a government shutdown.
One can lament that there should have been time to do so, but in the end, if riders had been completely prohibited in Congress, we would have endured a Newt Gingrich style shutdown for the Pentagon, VA hospitals, the Social Security Agency, and every other government service.
Bet they would have figured a way to get their work done on time the next year, though! Talk about your excuses! “Uh, we had to do it this shoddy, screwed-up, way with no accountability and no transparancy, boss! Vacationtime was coming up and we’d never get in it on time to leave for our holidays, unless we did it this way!”
If I’m their boss (and hey! I am! What do you know?) I’m not going to be very accepting of that excuse.
And just for shits and giggles, DOEs the house prohibit riders? If so, how do they manage to function?
My understanding was that the decision to delay the individual appropriations bills was made intentionally to avoid dealing with the current administration. The general consensus across both parties was that regardless of who won the election, the legislative priorities would be significantly different than they are under Bush. So they decided that rather than waste a lot of time trying to guess what the new administration’s priorities would be, and whether the Dems would have a veto-proof Congress, they passed what is often called a continuing resolution that would keep the government operating at mostly the same level of spending and doing the same things they’ve done over the past year.
Even so, how many wooden arrows are sold each year? I might be mis-reading something, but it sounds like one guy basically got an Act of Parliament passed to give his tiny minority interest business a tax break. I’m not sure that’s a good direction for a Democratic country to be taking, especially when the tax break thing was hidden in another bill completely unrelated to the Wooden Arrowmaker’s business.
You might think so. Or you might think that this guy’s business was inappropriately encompassed in the original tax provision. It seems perfectly reasonable to me. Since when is it in the interests of the government to have such broad tax rules that a particular business sector (in this case, wooden arrows for use by children) is basically taxed out of existence? And in the end, what does it matter where this provision was “hidden”?
That’s a difficult question, and one I admit I’m not sure I’ve got an answer for.
I’m a huge believer in Bills only covering one “thing”, for want of a better word, at a time, and that the Act’s subject should be clearly spelt out in the title.
Having a Tax Amendment Act (Wooden Arrow Makers & Other Designated Small Businesses) Act 2008 which covered Tax relief for wooden arrow makers, hat blockers, sock darners, old timey blacksmiths, and other really small, minority interest businesses, would be fine IMHO.
That way, people can see what their Parliament is doing, and not have to go looking for Acts relating to Road Laws to find out that the Army has been allocated $10,000,000 for sunscreen and hats, for example.
But in thie end, isn’t this just a stylistic matter? After all, a bill has to be encoded in statute. It’s the statute that’s the “real” law.
I haven’t looked at this particular bill, but generally, a piece of legislation will be divided into “titles,” each with a title describing the following provision. So, it’s very likely that the tax title you describe is in this kind of bill.
I’m not sure that the system you’re describing would really be any easier to search through. As I said, it’s the encoded statute that really counts when it comes to applied law, not the original arrangement of the legislation.
Well, get ready to be outraged, because in the last ten years, Congress has passed all of its appropriations bills only twice. Other times there were bills which consolidated several appropriations into a single measure.
It does not have such rules. The leadership of the majority party (i.e., Speaker, chairmen of committees) is able to combine bills pretty much as it sees fit. The House does have rules that, for the most part, deny individual members the ability to offer nongermane amendments.
This basically means that the minority in the House has very little chance to get votes on issues that they consider important. For example, let’s take the minimum wage. When Republicans controlled the House, they would not allow a bill to raise the minimum wage to get to the floor. And Democrats couldn’t offer a minimum wage amendment to any other bill because it was not germane. The logjam only ended when Democrats took control of the House. Meanwhile, raising the minimum wage received numerous votes in the Senate. This is a story repeated time after time, where popular measures can’t get a vote in the House because the leadership opposes them and the minority party cannot offer an amendment to another bill: oil drilling, employment non-discrimination for homosexuals, greenhouse gas cap and trade limitations, campaign finance reform, and so on.
As I said before, ending the ability to consider non-germane amendments would mean that the minority parties in Congress would lose virtually any ability to move forward issues that the majority didn’t want to vote on. Absolutely, yes, the process can be abused (drilling in ANWR was added to a defense bill in the dark of night without there ever being a vote on it, and it was stripped out at the very last moment). But I tend to see it as a good thing that the minority can at least occasionally raise important issues for votes that may benefit the country, opposition of the leadership of the majority party notwithstanding.
Such a bill was raised in both the House and the Senate this year, and different versions were passed by each house. Because of differences in approaches (how to pay for the one year extension of already existing tax cuts), neither bill would pass the other house. What appeared in the bailout bill was pretty much the Senate-passed bill.