Okay well I know the stimulus bill is passed and settled now so this will likely be my last post on the subject.  But I’ve had several questions recently about whether or not there’s any truth to accusations of pork in the stimulus and while I’ve mentioned some stimulus myths in a previous post (see “ACORN, Fieldmice, Banning Prayer, Socialized Medicine and other Stimulus Fear-Mongering“) and I’ve talked a little bit about pork in some of my previous posts, I haven’t yet focused on it specifically.  So with this post I intend to answer this question to the best of my ability: “Does the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka. The Stimulus Bill) contain pork-barrel spending?”

To address this question we’ll first have to decide on a definition for “Pork-Barrel Spending”.  A pretty representative definition can be found at TheFreeDictionary.com:

“A government project or appropriation that yields jobs or other benefits to a specific locale and patronage opportunities to its political representative.”

While the various definitions I’ve found do vary slightly they all seem to agree on the common theme that pork-barrel spending (which is synonymous with “earmarks” according to most sources) is a “pet project” inserted by a legislator primarily for the benefit of that lawmaker’s constituents.  Some examples of “Pork-Barrel Spending” taken from the website of the organization Citizens Against Government Waste include:

• $375,000,000 for an unrequested and unneeded amphibious assault ship in the state of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.);

• $700,000 for the Admiral Theater in Bremerton, Washington, the district of House appropriator Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), despite a $4.2 million privately-funded facelift; and

• $500,000 for the Olympic Tree Program in the state of Senate appropriator Robert Bennett for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

So now that we’ve established what an earmark is, are they in the stimulus bill?  The short answer, as far as I can tell, is “not really”.  By the standard definition of earmarks, the definition listed above, the definition that has always been used to refer to earmarks in the past, I haven’t been able to find any evidence of any earmarks/pork-barrel spending items in the bill.  I’ve read the bill, and you can feel free to read it yourself (“Read The Stimulus For Yourself“).  The money is doled out very generally to various government departments.  Money intended for private industry is never allotted to particular companies or projects, and those specific projects that are mentioned are solely those run by the federal government, designed to benefit the government itself or the nation as a whole and can not accurately be called “earmarks”.  There are a couple items that could be classified as earmarks using a loose definition of the term and I’ll discuss those at the end of this article.

So what of all the angry rumors of money going to specific dog-parks, butterfly preserves, fieldmice in SF, golf carts, volcano monitoring, and on and on and on.  Some legislators claim that there are billions of dollars of pork-barrel spending in the bill.  Well most of those allegations are based on the same line of reasoning, which I think most readers will find to be pretty tenuously constructed.  We’ll review one of the most outlandish and oft-repeated claims, that there is “8 billion on the stimulus for a levitating train to DisneyLand”, as an example.

So the story of the Levitating train to Disneyland has been told by Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and made its way up to John Boehner, John McCain and Mitch McConnel, before finally being included in Bobby Jindal’s official Republican response to President Obama’s speech to the joint sessions of congress.  This money was supposedly inserted into the stimulus by Harry Reid, or so the story goes, to build a “levitating train” connecting Las Vegas and Disneyland.  Certainly this has to be an outrageous example of government waste gone wild!

Well the truth behind this claim is that Harry Reid, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Republican Gov of Nevada Jim Gibbons, have been in talks for some time about building a high speed train to connect Las Vegas and LA.  In fact environmental research was performed last summer to those ends.  And “levitating trains” are in the works.  They’re more commonly called “Maglev trains” and they’re used all over the world because their use of magnets reduces friction allowing for higher speeds, increased safety, and greater energy efficiency.  So the Maglev train to LA became the “levitating train to Disneyland” and I can only assume that choice was made because that phrasing elicits a greater visceral reaction.  Now the rumor about this project being included in the stimulus arose because when the stimulus bill was transfered over from the house to the senate, the amount of transportation department money designated to go to high speed rail projects was increased from 2 billion (i believe) to 8 billion.  Since Harry Reid is in the senate, and he has apparently always wanted a bullet train connecting LV and LA, stimulus opponents jumped on the opportunity to portray this bump in funding as an example of wasteful pork-barrel spending.

Early on this claim may have been somewhat excusable, since Reid’s train may have been eligible for at least some of the money if the Department of Transportation had chosen to fund it.  While still not an “earmark” by the normal definition it, theoretically, could have been some underhanded attempt at an earmark if Reid has some kind of prior, secret, massively illegal agreement with the head of the transportation department.  Not a very likely conspiracy since the Transportation secretary is Republican Ray LaHood, but it was at least theoretically possible.  But after a few weeks the department of Transportation released their map of planned high-speed rail corridors.  And it looks like this: Designated High Speed Rail Corridors.   You’ll notice there isn’t a Las Vegas Train on the list.  And yet myths about this flying, disneyland-bound train persist even to this day and are repeated even by highly regarded stimulus opponents.

So we see that even in this example, there is no money designated for any specific train to anywhere.  There is money (8 billion) in the stimulus bill for high speed rail generally, with the decision of which trains should be funded left up to the transportation secretary.  Nearly all claims of stimulus pork are projects that stimulus opponents believe these departments may use their money on, but it has become common practice to say, “there is money in the stimulus for _____”  when in reality there is money in the stimulus for a particular department and stimulus opponents fear that money may be used for _______.   Remember the definition of Pork-Barrel spending is funding inserted into a bill for a particular “pet project” designed to benefit his/her constituents.  If items that a bill’s funds could possibly be used for in the future count as “pork” or “earmarks” then it is a drastic redefinition of the term, and its a definition that could be used to label any spending someone finds even potentially objectionable as “pork”.

The second way pork-claims are justified is very similar.  The US Conference of Mayors issued a report on Jan 17th listing all of the “shovel-ready” projects they had in their cities that could benefit from stimulus money.  You can see these lists, broken down by state and city at StimulusWatch.org.  Of course none of these projects are included specifically in the stimulus bill.  But money is being sent to states to use how they see fit, some of which will trickle down to various cities and will likely be used to fund some of these projects.  So stimulus opponents combed through this list, selected the most ridiculous sounding items, and then paraded them around as pork-barrel spending.  Statements such as this one from Erik Paulson of Minnosota…

“the [stimulus] bill contains a huge amount of spending on many things that are unrelated to saving or creating jobs… It will fund requests such as $2 million for neon signs in Las Vegas, $4.5 million for an eco park featuring butterfly gardens and gopher tortoises, $500,000 for a dog park, $3 million for a municipal golf course clubhouse, $886,000 for a 36-hole disc golf course, $1.8 million for replacement tennis courts, $6 million for three aquatic centers with water slides … the list goes on and on.”

…are simply lists of items from this report from the US Conference of Mayors.  In reality each of these projects would have to compete for stimulus funding and individual states would decide if they get the money.  Obviously the vast, vast majority of projects on these lists will not end up being funded at all, and we have no way of knowing right now which ones will and which ones wont.  And some of the projects on this particular list aren’t even eligible for funding since the Stimulus Bill stipulates that:

“ARRA: Sec. 1604: None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in this Act may be used by any State or local government, or any private entity, for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool. “

The claims of 3,000 or more pork-barrel spending items in the stimulus bill are arrived at by counting all of the shovel-ready projects listed by US mayors, governors, and government agencies.  Once again, this is a very new definition of “pork-barrel spending” and I think most people will agree its not very accurate, and could even be called purposefully sensationalized and distorted.

Now as I said above, the answer to whether or not the stimulus bill contains earmarks is probably more properly given “not really” than a straight “no”.  Because while 99% of “pork-barrel” claims are accounted for by one of the two methods described above, and its true that there aren’t any elements of the bill that fit the strict historical definition of pork, there are a few items that would probably be considered “earmarks” by a reasonable person.

Specifically, there’s several million dollars for philipino veterans of WWII from US owned islands who never previously received normal veteran benefits.  There’s also a provision in the bill calling for $2 billion for a “near zero emissions powerplant.” Which many suspect is intended to restart FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois.  There’s also $70 million for “supercomputer activities, especially as they relate to climate research.” The Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee, says that is probably targeted for the National Center for Environmental Prediction in Camp Springs, Md.  The group also cites $250 million that is designated “to repair NASA facilities damaged by Hurricane Ike and to reduce the significant backlog of maintenance and repair projects at NASA facilities nationwide.” That appears to be for the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Those were the only items in the stimulus I could find that could reasonable be construed as earmarks.  Though even these items are not earmarks in the strict sense since they were not planted by any particular legislators and they aren’t really clearly benefitting the constituents of any particular legislator.  But they could be considered earmarks because they contain cash that is specifically set apart for certain companies or projects.  Or at least they appear to be even if not explicitly designated as such.

So that’s it.  Not nearly as exciting or scandalous as its made out to be.  There are a few spending items that could be loosely defined as earmarks, so the administration’s claims that the bill is “earmark free” may be technically accurate though a little bit of a stretch.  But none of the projects often cited by stimulus opponents are mentioned specifically in the stimulus bill and most claims of “pork-barrel spending” are really hard to see as anything other than a misrepresentation, when investigated more thoroughly.

On a personal note I think the lack of significant earmarks in the stimulus bill is a laudable accomplishment.  Completely earmark-free or not its certainly a huge improvement over what we’ve done in the past.  The new “omnibus” spending bill, on the other hand, which is currently making its way through the legislature is unfortunately laden with thousands upon thousands of earmarks.  Most of those were established before the current administration took office but Obama hasn’t specifically spoken out against the pork-filled bill yet.  It remains to be seen whether the relative cleanliness of the stimulus bill signals a new direction for our government or just a momentary reprieve from pork-barrel spending.  Time will tell.

For more interesting stimulus fact-checking be sure to check out Politifact.com and Factcheck.Org both of which were used in researching this article.  They are the two most unbiased, non-partisan political fact-checking groups I’ve come across, and they’re very thorough.  I recommend checking their websites on a regular basis.

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One last stimulus post and then I promise I’ll take a break.  I have been utterly amazed at the creative reading skills of stimulus opponents over the last few weeks.  As they say a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has finished putting its shoes on.  And the four outrageous claims discussed here have been passed around virtually unchallenged for a while now.

ACORN Nuttiness

The idea that there was money for ACORN in the stimulus was first invented by Fox news in the run up to the stimulus debate and its since been parroted by republican legislators including John Boehner and David Vitter.  In reality, of course, ACORN is not mentioned at all in the bill but what worries republicans is that 4.2 billion is set aside for local governments and (gasp) non-profit organizations to help them buy up foreclosed homes, fix them up, and sell them or rent them out.  So the logic goes 1.There is money in the bill for non-profits to buy up homes,   2. ACORN is a non-profit organization that does things vaguely housing related   3. The democrats are trying to sneak money to their buddies at ACORN!!!!!

Lest you think I’m exaggerating here is a quote from Louisiana Republican David Vitter on the subject: ”$4.2 billion dollars would be available to organizations like ACRON for so-called neighborhood revitalization. That’s just political payoff, quite frankly, not in spite of their voter registration fraud activity, really because of it, in my opinion, in terms of support from some of the liberals in Congress.”  … Wow.   That’s quite a conspiracy theory he’s put together there.  Never mind the fact that “ACORN Housing” is an entirely different organization than the ACORN that committed voter fraud, never mind that ACORN housing has never purchased a foreclosed home in its history and has no plans to do so, and never mind that…no liberal politicians benefitted in any way from the poorly conceived voter fraud committed by low-level ACORN employees.  Of course David Vitter and John Boehner know all that, but providing that kind of context would hurt their case.

Field Mouse Fiasco

This one originated with Rep Steve King of Iowa but was also picked up by the illustrious John Boehner, and has been featured on the Drudge report.  It all started with this memo from the house, brought to you via Politifact.com:

“Appropriations Republicans, concerned with this irresponsible process and possible abuse of taxpayer funds, have asked various federal agencies how they intend to spend the windfall of cash that Congress may approve in the ‘stimulus’ bill,” said a memo posted to the site. “One peek behind the bureaucratic curtain has yielded the following examples of hidden program information that isnot included in the language of the bill or report. These are programs which various federal agencies have privately indicated they will fund with ‘stimulus’ money.”

The memo lists a number of projects, including up to $37.5 million for “wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area – including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse.”

Basically, unable to find pork in the bill, House republicans decided to ask states and federal agencies what they were planning on using their money for.  On a list of possible projects put forward by CA was this wetland restoration project, a small portion of which focused on protecting this marshy rodent.  Of course with Ms Pelosi being the rep from San Francisco her name was quickly attached to this project as the originator of this trumped up “pork”.  An article yesterday in the Washington Times was headlined ”Pelosi’s mouse slated for $30M slice of cheese.”  and included the blatant falsehood that the stimulus bill, ”includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.”

This is really a good example of how many of the “pork” rumors about the stimulus have been invented.  Once again, the creativity evident here is impressive.

Banning Prayer

And of course a great way to get Americans frothing at the mouth is to push the old “democrats are silencing religion” button.  This myth seems to be sole property of South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, perhaps because its so ill-conceived that no one else wants to be associated with it.  Basically the stimulus contains standard boilerplate prohibiting federal funds going to colleges from being used to refurbish “buildings used for religious worship”.  Sen DeMint has (willfully?) misinterpreted this to mean that students would be barred from praying in their dorm rooms.  Of course there’s oodles of Supreme Court precedent that says otherwise and phrases exactly like this one have been included in hundreds of spending bills gone by without the world crashing down.  I think that’s all that needs to be said about that one.

The Stimulus will Override Your Doctors and Kill Your Parents!

Of all the myths surrounding the stimulus bill this one is perhaps most widespread right now, and simultaneously most insane.  The stimulus smartly establishes a “Health Technology Czar” to oversee the much-needed and long-overdue national transition to electronic health records.  There was a bloomberg article posted a few days back (found here) in which the author used a combination of astonishingly poor reading skills and skillful alarmism to claim that the Health Tech Czar would be empowered to review the decisions of all doctors in America, overrule their diagnosis, and enforce efficiency.  I’m not kidding.  Conservative pundits immediately ran with the story, before checking to see if her claims were correct.

Ann Coulter said Health and Human Services “bureaucrats will soon be empowered to overrule your doctor” and “cut off treatments that merely prolong life.” She also claimed, “Doctors who don’t comply with the government’s treatment protocols will be fined.”  Lousiana Republican John Fleming went on Glenn Beck’s show and said the ”health technology czar” will “oversee what procedures doctors are doing and help decide at what point in life they will receive certain treatments and perhaps what treatments are acceptable and not acceptable for payment.”  Beck, disappointingly, didn’t challenge those claims but made this “outrage” the focus of the remainder of his show.  This culminated in an article in the Washington Times two days ago that ran a story about how the stimulus was leading us towards Nazi-Era Eugenics and it featured a large picture of Hitler.   The story has since been picked up by The Drudge Report, Lou Dobbs, Fox News Anchor Bill Hemmer, and Rush Limbaugh.  All this from one little poorly-researched article that nobody bothered to double check.

But the author’s one mistake was that she provided references to the page numbers in the stimulus that “supported” her claims.  While all those pundits were apparently too busy to glance over them, I found five minutes to look them up.  And I would invite you too as well.  I read the indicated pages with curiosity and found them to be very clear in saying nothing of the sort.  All of the Health Tech Czar’s powers related to enforcing adoption of electronic medical records and nothing more.  But I wasn’t the only one.  One of CNN’s medical correspondents had a similar experience:

When challenged the bloomberg author’s reaction was essentially that the wording of the bill may not actually say anything like that but it leaves that possibility open because it doesn’t specifically rule it out.  All the talk of the elderly and sick being euthanized is just extrapolation from the author’s apocalyptic fantasy.  Believe me, if anything like this was going to be happening, the AMA would be going nuts.  Nobody, democrat, republican, or canadian wants to see government dictating healthcare decisions.  Besides, that role is already filled by your friendly neighborhood insurance company.

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To continue the themes of my post earlier today, if you want to read the stimulus bill for yourself, the Senate compromise version can be found here: Senate Stimulus Bill.  If you right click on the link you can choose to download it to your computer for easier reading.  Its 778 pages.  But its 778 pages of double spaced, 16 point text that only takes up the middle third of the page.  So it reads much more quickly than one would expect.  Its brought to you via Readthestimulus.org.  And you can go there to find previous versions of the bill.  The new house and senate compromise version should be available soon.

Once again, if you can find some kind of pet project hidden in it then by all means notify news agencies because you’ll have some pretty exclusive information.  For all the talk of the “bloated, pork-filled stimulus”  I haven’t been able to find anything yet.

UPDATE:  See the way that the spending in the final bill breaks down through this intuitive little tool: CNN Stimulus Spending Chart

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Well I might as well get started.  On this blog I’m planning on spending a fair amount of time covering principles rather than current events, but with all that’s happening now with the stimulus, and with us being at the beginning of one of the greatest economic crisis in American history, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about it a bit.  Just in case you missed it, these are the prepared remarks from President Obama’s news conference a few days ago.  Its via Hulu so you may have to watch a commercial before it starts.  If you haven’t watched it yet I suggest you do so.  In fact its probably a good idea to watch the rest of his remarks as well.  Which can also be found on Hulu.

I thought he did a good job explaining some of the rationale behind the plan and driving home some of the most important points.  Overall I just thought it was great to have a president who was willing to admit that the plan wasn’t perfect and that things may not turn out the way they hope.  His candor was really refreshing.  And he took the time to explain things to the American people.  He didn’t just say “trust me”, he didn’t just spew slogans and talking points, he tried to explain the plan the way a friend would try to explain it to you.  Once again, very refreshing.

Still the stimulus plan is complex, and he was only able to address a few of the issues surrounding the bill.  Hopefully I’ll be able to delve into some of them a little more deeply tomorrow.

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