Followup Articles on Pork ‘N Earmarks

Posted on by David Stokes

Two more articles about what makes an earmark, what defines pork, and when are they justified, are in the Missouri media. Dave Catanese has an interview over at KY3 with Rep. Roy Blunt on the subject (link via Combest), and the Columbia Daily Tribune had a story a few days ago about the Jeff City legislative process used to spend the stimulus funds. I particularly recommend the interviews with two former Missouri legislators at the end of the KY3 story.

It is pretty clear that the stimulus money turned Jeff City’s budget process into something a little more like Washington’s. That was probably unavoidable. When you tell legislators to spend a lot of money quickly, it is not going to be pretty. I don’t mean this as a criticism of the people in Jeff City, but I certainly look forward to the return of the old ways next year, when the General Assembly doesn’t have hundreds of millions to throw around. We had considered in the past doing a report on pork spending by the General Assembly, but we never did, because, frankly, there is not a lot of pork or earmarking in Jeff City. The stimulus money changed that, but hopefully only for one year. Former Sen. Wayne Goode put it well:

“The way it works in Missouri, is that you always need a majority vote somewhere — either in committee or on the floor. It doesn’t really work like it does in Congress. The process is tighter, more structured on the state level.”

I am excited to see these discussions taking place in the public, media, and campaign spheres. I applaud everyone participating in the conversation about how our governments decide to spend what they spend. The budget process in Missouri needs to remain much stricter than it is in D.C., and more of our elected officials in both parties need to swear off both earmarks (which I am defining as spending items put into place after the committee process has ended) and pork (which I am defining as using general tax dollars to benefit very limited interests).

Term Limits

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

I’ve heard good arguments on both sides of the term limits debate. The opposing side contends that voters should be able to elect the candidate they prefer, even if that person has already served a few terms. Arbitrary limits could make politicians less responsive to voters if they know they won’t be up for reelection. And term limits haven’t transformed politics into the honest and impartial process some hoped they would.

People in favor of term limits counter that politics works to the advantage of incumbents. Term limits give other people a chance to be elected. Term limits also reduce the returns to bribery and corruption, because any politician whose vote is bought will be out of office in a few years. And term limits can keep politicians from getting too comfortable and insulated from the real world.

Those arguments all have some merit — unlike the arguments against term limits put forth in this article. Here’s why the Speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives opposes term limits:

Over time, Richard said, lawmakers develop the institutional knowledge and personal fortitude to become powerful enough to stand up to the executive branch and the hordes of lobbyists who try to influence legislation.

The longer you wield political power, the more personal fortitude you develop? Tell that to Lord Acton!

Cape Girardeau’s Wise Choice

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Combest links to an encouraging article about the August sales tax holiday. I find it encouraging, because I don’t like the holiday, and the article reports that Cape Girardeau won’t participate this year.

Nobody likes paying sales taxes, so what’s the big deal if the tax is lifted for a couple days each year? The problem is, the tax isn’t really lifted. Directing consumers to out-of-the-way places or less convenient shopping dates is itself a kind of tax. The state doesn’t receive any sales tax revenue during the holiday, but consumers lose money and time. They pay a little more to buy gas and drive to a participating municipality. They stand in line a little longer in a store that’s extra-busy thanks to the arbitrary holiday.

I suppose you could say that the holiday is good because, although it’s wasteful, the money that people lose doesn’t go to the state. That’s a little less tax revenue for the state to use in expanding its activities. But, by that reasoning, you might as well throw your money out the window rather than give it to the government. A tax holiday amounts to the same thing.

Standard Bearers

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Missouri is one of four holdouts from the coalition to draft national education standards.

I’m glad Missouri hasn’t signed on. Beware of states bearing standards. No state by itself has particularly good standards, so the chances are slim that all of them together will come up with something better. And bad standards could serve to solidify the near-monopolistic state of the education market. After standards are adopted, textbook companies that go along with them are rewarded and competing curricula are crowded out.

I fear my rejoicing may be short-lived, though, because when Arne Duncan includes the standards in his “Race to the Tax Dollars” — I mean, “Race to the Top” — scheme, Missouri will have little choice but to go along.

There is one reason for optimism: Standards on paper don’t necessarily affect what happens in a classroom. Within a single state, some districts teach beyond the standards, and others lag far behind. That pattern will continue to hold if standards are adopted at the national level.

For more on national standards, and to learn why they’re like unicorns, see Neal McCluskey’s post at Cato@Liberty.

Are Green Jobs Sustainable?

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

This op-ed defends green jobs subsidies with the argument that the resulting jobs are sustainable.

In a sense, it’s right. Green jobs are sustainable — for the wrong reasons. Once the government starts subsidizing jobs, the people employed by the program are few and easy to organize. They lobby to maintain the subsidy. The people who lose out — taxpayers and consumers — are numerous and spread throughout the economy. They can’t band together to blot out each and every economic inefficiency. So the subsidies perpetuate themselves.

In a complex economy, expecting jobs to be sustainable is unrealistic. Compare the jobs that exist today to the jobs people did two or three hundred years ago. Some professions, like farming and medicine, are still around, although the technology used looks dramatically different. Many jobs have disappeared. You don’t see wainwrights listed in the phone book. (You don’t even see many phone book publishers anymore!) And it’s a good thing, because the decline of some professions made possible the ascent of other, more useful and profitable professions.

A good job is one that makes both the employer and employee better off. Businesses will create new and better jobs whenever opportunities arise, as long as they aren’t bogged down sustaining outdated jobs.

More Good News From Florida

Posted on by Eric D. Dixon

Florida has expanded its statewide scholarship program to provide school choice options for low-income children. That state’s governor, Charlie Crist, signed the bill today:

HB 453, renames the “Corporate Income Tax Credit Scholarship” the “Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program” and expands public school choice for parents and students. The bill expands the program to include insurance premium taxes as a contribution for funding Florida tax credit scholarships. A maximum of $118 million is available for low-income children to attend a school participating in the program. The legislation broadens the base of companies likely to participate and increases the likelihood that the maximum value of the tax credits will be used.

Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, had this to say:

Florida continues to be a big dog in school choice. Without a doubt they are proving that Milton Friedman’s vision of school choice is not a partisan issue and that it is in the best interest for everyone to have a system of education that works for all children.

Congratulations, Florida!

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.

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