Pork barrel

Pork barrel, or simplypork, is ametaphorfor theappropriationof government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to direct expenditures to a representative'sdistrict. The usage originated inAmerican English, and it indicates a negotiated way ofpolitical particularism.
Scholars use it as a technical term regarding legislative control of local appropriations.In election campaigns, the term is used in derogatory fashion to attack opponents.  Typically, "pork" involves national funding for government programs whose economic or service benefits are concentrated in a particular area but whose costs are spread among all taxpayers.Public worksprojects, certain national defense spending projects, andagricultural subsidiesare the most commonly cited examples.Citizens Against Government Wasteoutlines seven criteria by which spending in the United States can be classified as "pork":
The termpork barrel politicsoriginated inAmerican English,and usually refers to spending intended to benefitconstituentsof apoliticianin return for their political support, either in the form ofcampaign contributionsor votes. In the popular 1863 story "The Children of the Public",Edward Everett Haleused the termpork barrelas a homely metaphor for any form of public spending to the citizenry;however, after theAmerican Civil War, the term came to be used in a derogatory sense. TheOxford English Dictionarydates the modern sense of the term to 1910.
Pork barrels originally came from storing meat.By the 1870s, references to "pork" were common in Congress, and the term was further popularized by a 1919 article by Chester Collins Maxey in theNational Municipal Review, which reported on certain legislative acts known to members of Congress as "pork barrel bills". He claimed that the phrase originated in a pre-Civil War practice of giving enslaved people a barrel of salt pork as a reward and requiring them to compete among themselves to get their share of the handout.More generally, a barrel ofsalt porkwas a commonlarderitem in 19th-century households and could be used as a measure of the family's financial well-being. For example, in his 1845 novelThe Chainbearer,James Fenimore Cooperwrote: "I hold a family to be in a desperate way when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel."
An early example of pork barrel politics in the United States was theBonus Bill of 1817, which was introduced by DemocratJohn C. Calhounto constructhighwayslinking the Eastern and Southern United States to itsWestern frontierusing the earnings bonus from theSecond Bank of the United States. Calhoun argued for it using general welfare and post-roads clauses of theUnited States Constitution. Although he approved of the economic development goal, PresidentJames Madisonvetoed the bill asunconstitutional.
One of the most famous alleged pork-barrel projects was theBig DiginBoston,Massachusetts. The Big Dig was a project to relocate an existing 3.5-mile (5.6 km) section of theInterstate Highway Systemunderground. The official planning phase started in 1982; the construction was done between 1991 and 2006, and the project concluded on December 31, 2007. It ended up costing US$14.6billion, or over US$4 billion per mile.Tip O'Neill(D-Mass), after whom one of the Big Dig tunnels was named, pushed to have the Big Dig funded by the federal government while he was thespeaker of the United States House of Representatives.
During the2008 United States presidential electioncampaign, theGravina Island Bridge(also known as the "Bridge to Nowhere") in Alaska was cited as an example of pork barrel spending. The bridge, pushed for by Republican SenatorTed Stevens, was projected to cost $398 million and would connect the island's 50 residents and theKetchikan International AirporttoRevillagigedo IslandandKetchikan.Pork-barrel projects, which differ fromearmarks, are added to the federal budget by members of the appropriation committees of theUnited States Congress. This allows the delivery of federal funds to the local district or state of the appropriation committee member, often accommodating major campaign contributors. To a certain extent, a member of Congress is judged by their ability to deliver funds to their constituents. The Chairman and theranking memberof theUnited States Senate Committee on Appropriationsare in a position to deliver significant benefits to their states. Researchers Anthony Fowler and Andrew B. Hall claim that this still does not account for the high reelection rates of incumbent representatives in American legislatures.Former Hawaii SenatorDaniel Inouyedescribed himself as "the No. 1 earmarks guy in the U.S. Congress".Inouye regularly passed earmarks for funding in the state of Hawaii including military and transportation spending.