Pork vs. Earmarks: What’s the Difference?

Posted on by David Stokes

I think it is great that the candidates for the open congressional seat in Southwest Missouri are having an ongoing discussion about wasteful spending, earmarks, and pork. The Springfield News-Leader had an informative story about it the other day, which both Missouri Political News Service and Combest brought to my attention.

Here’s the issue that got the story going: Sen. Gary Nodler, one of the candidates for Congress, maintained that his support for government funding of a business in his district was not an “earmark.” His position has raised the ire of certain people, including the commentators over at MOPNS. I completely understand the frustration there with the far-too-common issue of conservatives who decry government spending except when it occurs in their own districts, but I am going to come (somewhat) to Sen. Nodler’s defense.

We will get into strict definitions of pork, earmarks, etc., in a moment, but I agree with the conventional understanding, which Sen. Nodler appears to share, that an “earmark” constitutes spending that is added to a bill late in the legislative process, usually after all the committee work has been completed. Such spending usually receives little, if any, oversight or review before the money goes out the door. “Pork”, as I have generally considered it, is spending for specific projects that strictly benefit a limited group of people but are paid for by a wide group of people. So, I think it’s fair for Sen. Nodler to contend that this spending for the Joplin battery maker was not an “earmark,” because it was included during the committee debates. However, the spending is clearly “pork,” by anyone’s definition.

In my mind, earmarks and pork do not have to be the same thing. Both are usually poor policy, but not always. How do others define them? Here is the White House definition, which I basically reject outright because it totally co-opts Congress’ constitutional authority to appropriate money. As the Office of Management and Budget basically puts it, if Congress spends money the way that the White House tells it to do so, that is good. However, if it spends money outside White House authority, that is bad. Total garbage. Slate had a good piece a few years ago trying to explain the differing definitions of “pork” and “earmark.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is a terrific group. They have a definition of “pork” that includes most earmarks. To them, any government spending is “pork” if it meets two of these seven guidelines:

  • Requested by only one chamber of Congress;

  • Not specifically authorized;

  • Not competitively awarded;

  • Not requested by the President (or Governor in our case);

  • Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;

  • Not the subject of congressional hearings; or

  • Serves only a local or special interest.

So, I agree with Sen. Nodler that his project was not an earmark, according to how I understood the term. Now, if he tried to say that spending $25 million for a battery factory in his district was not “pork,” that would be different, because it seems to fit at least four of the above criteria (3, 4, 6, 7, and perhaps 1). I will gladly stand corrected if anything I have said is incorrect, so Jeff City staff should be feel to clarify in the comments section.

A Charter School After My Own Heart; And, Public Service Academy Sighting?

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Now, this is my kind of charter school.

Actually, I don’t know much about American Indian Public Charter — and I’m reluctant to make any judgments based on the slanted L.A. Times article — but it’s a great picture nonetheless. I say “slanted” because the article insinuates darkly that the school picks the students who will most likely succeed. The only evidence for this are comments from teachers’ union members, while another public school that, by its own admission, does cherry pick students is celebrated in the same edition of the paper. The difference? American Indian enforces strict discipline, improves test scores of poor students, and espouses a free-market philosophy; the school in New York directs students to think about community activism and group power struggles. This sentence sums it up:

Ann Kirschner, Macaulay’s dean, says that a decade from now, one way she’ll know the Honors College is a success is if she reads that a graduate is elected mayor of New York.

Maybe this is the public service academy we’ve been on the lookout for!

What the Critics Are Saying

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

My last post responding to charter school criticisms elicited even more criticisms, so it’s time for another installment in the series. The following ideas have been expressed in the comments on this blog and around the Internet. I’ve included my arguments in favor of charters:

Charter schools need to prove they’re good enough before they receive public money.

Charter schools are public schools. It may look like they do things differently, but that’s just because they’re more willing to experiment than the traditional districts. Charters don’t do anything that’s illegal for a non-charter public school to do. Your run-of-the-mill public district could behave like a charter if it wanted to (or, more accurately, if it faced similar incentives to improve).

It’s not right to hold charters to a much stricter standard than other public schools. No one says, “SLPS isn’t meeting expectations — no more state funding for SLPS!” And we shouldn’t tell that to charters either. If anything, traditional districts should be held to a higher standard than charters, because kids can be forced to attend traditional districts if they have no other options, whereas no one need attend a charter school. Charter school students are free to return to their traditional district schools at any time, if their families aren’t satisfied. There’s no comparable check on the district.

Some charter schools don’t do as well as traditional districts on state tests.

Some charter schools are good. Some, from the vantage point of standardized testing, are less than stellar. No reformer expects charters to be uniformly excellent. The good news about bad charters is that word spreads and people aren’t eager to get into them. If they can’t attract students, they close — a mechanism to root out the bad that never applies to traditional districts. In practice, most charter schools improve in order to avoid exiting the market. They may do so by hiring new leadership, or learning from more successful charters.

Charter school supporters are just interested in reducing the tax burden.

As I mentioned above, charter schools are public schools. Students who enroll in charters aren’t leaving public education — they’re switching to a different kind of public school. In the long run, I suppose it’s possible that charters could help reduce the tax burden, if they are able to educate students more efficiently than the wasteful traditional districts. That would be great if it happened, but it’s a long way off. I, for one, am interested in charters because they can help kids now, not because of any potential tax savings in the future.

Feel free to disprove any of my arguments in the comments — or to bring up new objections and give me a head start on my next charter school post.

School Choice Is the New Civil Rights Struggle

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

The Wall Street Journal ran an excellent editorial yesterday, by Brendan Miniter, pointing out that school choice has become a bipartisan issue. It’s inexcusable to leave children trapped in public school systems that are failing them, and an increasingly large number of politicians of every ideological stripe are working together to bring about real educational freedom.

From the article:

[Senator Robert] Ford was once like many Democrats on education — a reliable vote against reforms that would upend the system. But over the past three and a half years he’s studied how school choice works and he’s now advocating tax credits and scholarships that parents can spend on public or private schools.

He’s not alone. Three other prominent black Democrats in South Carolina have publicly challenged party orthodoxy. In 2006 State Rep. Harold Mitchell Jr. crossed party lines to endorse Republican Karen Floyd for state education superintendent. “We have to try something different,” he told me at the time. That same year, Curtis Brantley defeated a state representative in a primary fought over education reform. And last year, Ennis Bryant ran (unsuccessfully) against an anti-school-choice state representative in a primary.

These men are the most visible part of a movement joining black Democrats and political conservatives in a common cause. In recent years, school-choice candidates (black and white) have taken the seats of more than half a dozen antichoice legislators, and there have been two mass rallies for school choice at the state capitol that included black leaders.

Charter and private schools geared toward impoverished black children also are cropping up, and no wonder. There are about 700,000 students in public schools in South Carolina, more than a third of whom — 247,000 — are in schools considered to be failing based on test scores. Nearly 60% of the kids in these failing schools — about 146,000 — are African-American. Blacks make up about 39% of public-school students.

In March, a Pulse Opinion Research poll of 1,000 black voters in the state reported that 53% agreed that school choice would improve public education (28% disagreed). Support for school-choice legislation increased to 61% when Mr. Ford’s name was attached to it.

Giving children access to the quality educations they so desperately need is simply a common-sense position, and if Missouri’s leaders genuinely care about providing opportunity for the state’s young students, they’ll help ensure that parents can choose the best available schools for their children.

Stand Together for School Choice

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

Yesterday, Andrew J. Coulson — director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom — wrote in the Washington Examiner:

Thousands rallied in DC earlier this month to save a federal program that helps low-income families afford private schooling. On the same day, President Obama signaled that he opposes school vouchers, but will seek funding so that students already attending private schools may continue to do so through the end of high school. When they’ve graduated, the voucher program would die. That isn’t good enough.

Not only is it not good enough, it’s disgraceful to deny children the freedom to escape failing public schools so that they have a real chance at a better life. Every day that children are denied this freedom, the nation’s future grows dimmer.

Coulson suggests, however, that rather than relying on the fickle political whims of Congress and the president, the District of Columbia should take matters into its own hands:

But there is another option: The District of Columbia can create its own scholarship program.

Can DC afford it? Average tuition at voucher-accepting schools is about $6,600, according to a federal study released last month. By contrast, the city is currently spending about $1.3 billion on k-12 education, for fewer than 49,000 students.

That works out to well over $26,000 per pupil — comparable to tuition at the prestigious Sidwell Friends school to which the president sends his own daughters, Sasha and Malia. So DC could easily offer a voucher even larger than the one currently provided by the federal government.

I should reiterate here that tuition tax credit programs can be structured so that they actually save taxpayer money — providing a fiscally sound and sustainable alternative to the crippling system in which so many children are currently trapped, both in our nation’s capital and right here in St. Louis.

Anybody who’s skeptical about the wisdom of school choice should take a few minutes to watch this video of the rally to save D.C.’s scholarship program:

These children are our future, but the political and public education establishments are fighting harder every day to leave them behind.

Great News From Arizona

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

I’ve discovered (via the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice) that the Grand Canyon State has approved legislation expanding school choice. The state’s governor, Jan Brewer, signed the bill into law today.

The Friedman Foundation’s president and CEO, Robert Enlow, said in a release that the new law “creates a new tax credit scholarship program for children with special needs and children in foster care.” He also pointed out that that the program replaces an earlier voucher program that the state’s courts discontinued:

This tax credit scholarship program was enacted in response to a State Supreme Court ruling declaring that a voucher program serving these children was unconstitutional. The new legislation offers priority to the children who received vouchers under the earlier program, ensuring that the educational needs of these children will continue to be served.

Sarah Brodsky, former Show-Me Institute policy analyst and still regular contributor to this blog, suggested last year that tuition tax credits are the best solution for Missouri’s autistic students, who generally don’t have access to the special educational programs they need in Missouri’s traditional public schools. Insurance plans generally fail to meet these students’ needs, as Brodsky points out:

Kids with autism may need up to 30 hours each week of behavioral modification, help with social skills, music therapy, and personal attention — in other words, a special school environment. Health insurance companies are set up to pay for medical treatment — which is only one part of the services autistic kids need — not to pay tuition.

Tuition tax credits are an especially useful solution in this case, because — as pointed out in an early 2008 Show-Me Institute study, “The Fiscal Effects of a Tuition Tax Credit Program in Missouri” — tuition tax credit programs can be constructed in such a way that they actually save the state money, so even more existing educational funding can be devoted to traditional public schools:

Opponents argue that such legislation would “cost” the state a significant amount of money, because it would decrease funding to public schools by the amount of the lost tax revenue from the credit. We demonstrate, however, that the net fiscal cost of a tuition tax credit program would actually be considerably lower than the lost tax revenues, and might even raise net revenues for the state. […] If such savings occur, it means that additional revenues will be available for students who remain in public schools, for other state programs such as Medicaid, or for tax reduction.

Congratulations to the people of Arizona for obtaining a little more educational freedom. Here’s hoping that they expand their program still more, to include all willing students, and that Missouri follows suit in bringing a new variety of educational options to all children throughout the state.

The Schnucks Challenge

Posted on by Clovis Ouangraoua

The Schnucks grocery chain faces some tough challenges regarding its plans to open a store in a Ballwin neighborhood, as a growing number of local residents voice rejection of the proposal. The Post-Dispatch ran a story about this yesterday, reporting that an attorney for Schnucks attempted to explain to residents the usefulness of the project.

The noise disturbance, the rezoning, and the (at least temporary) loss of property value are certainly among the reasons that residents might choose to protest, even though these reasons might be counterbalanced by the long-term growth in economic activity that would occur as a result of such a store opening. Today’s protesters could be tomorrow’s shoppers. As Nobel laureate economist Ronald Coase observed, projects of this type would have a much smoother process if developers could focus on economic factors like compensation for property owners with legitimate complaints, rather than having to jump through political hoops.

Another Reduction in Government Lobbying

Posted on by David Stokes

One issue we have talked about here before is the pervasive and unfortunate practice of governments hiring lobbyists to lobby other governments, usually for more aid or more authority to raise taxes. As if to celebrate Josh’s and my visit to the St. Louis city Board of Aldermen this morning (for the simple purpose of attending a meeting of that body, which we had never done before), the Post-Dispatch is reporting that the board cut money for the police department that would have been used to hire a lobbyist.

I commend the board for this. The police commissioners have other St. Louis–elected officials, not to mention their own standing as police officials, to engage legislators in Jefferson City. They don’t need to spend taxpayer dollars doing that. (And I say this even though I agree with the police board regarding the local control issue, which the Post article suggests was the rationale for hiring a lobbyist in the first place.)

Local officials who need assistance at the state or federal levels have their own respective elected officials and their staffs to help them. I have nothing against private organizations or individuals hiring lobbyists, but governments should not spend tax money in efforts to get still more tax money.

The Heart of Government

Posted on by Josh Smith

David Stokes and I just attended the weekly Board of Aldermen meeting for St. Louis city. It was actually quite enjoyable. For one thing, David’s extensive personal experience with local government made him a great resource and a wealth of information. He had a fast answer to every question I asked, and volunteered a great deal of information about the aldermen, as well as explaining some of the processes involved in moving a bill through the board’s approval process.

The board considered a number of bills today, and we heard the reading of a number of bills which would declare properties around town “blighted.” A couple of bills designated federal grant money for Lambert Airport, and a few dealt with approving financing for the Kiel Opera House.

At one point, when the proceedings had moved along rapidly for quite some time, Alderman Joe Vaccaro of the 23rd ward stood to move for approval of a rezoning bill he’d sponsored. For the first time in the meeting, roll was called for votes, and nearly every member in turn voted “no.” Every previous bill had passed without hesitation, and Stokes and I really wondered what was up. As soon as the votes were tallied, a revote was called and this time it passed unanimously. Suddenly, David understood and explained to me: This is a relatively new alderman, and they were playing a prank on him. We both found it pretty funny.

Much less funny was Resolution #50, calling on the Post-Dispatch to “reject the predatory practice of job outsourcing and keep St. Louis area jobs in St. Louis.” There was some discussion of the matter. Alderman Stephen Conway of the 8th ward in particular took the opportunity to admonish the hypocrisy of those who shout down outsourcing while driving foreign-made cars, and a third alderman who spoke on the matter agreed with these anti-outsourcing views.

During this discussion, the viewpoint I hold was completely unrepresented, although it is also largely the stance held by the economic profession as a whole. Outsourcing is only bad in the short term for the specific people laid off. But it also means that customers continue to get the things they were getting before (often for cheaper prices), and a mobile labor force allows both new and existing businesses to find potential employees more easily.

If you read only one critique of protectionism, let it be this.

There was also some heated discussion about a resolution “to convene hearings of the Public Safety Committee for the purpose of reviewing the conditions of the City jails in relation to the report of the ACLU-EM […]” At least one member of the Board of Aldermen has a personal distaste for the ACLU, and it showed — but ultimately the resolution passed.

Much of the time I spent there, I was struck with how civil and efficient the whole process appeared, and reminded of a blog post by Clovis Ouangraoua discussing how remarkable a peaceful government is. For any St. Louisan interested in seeing the process of local government in action, I honestly recommend visiting your Board of Aldermen for a meeting. The biggest praise I can give is that the whole affair was very efficient in terms of time, an attribute I chalk up largely to the guidance of Board President Lewis Reed, who wasted no time while officiating the proceedings.

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