Talk Story
Sen. Daniel Inouye’s
fat is in the fire againWHENEVER news organizations poll voter attitudes toward Congress they discover that, although we tend to like and appreciate our own, we have low regard for everybody else's senators and representatives. As a disgruntled taxpayer once said: "What this country needs is more unemployed politicians."
The upshot has been pressure for term limits and campaign reform and such lively exercises in disdain as the annual Citizens Against Government Waste's "Pig Book."
The headline this week was that Congress, according to CAGW, spent a record $20.1 billion on "pork barrel" projects last fall, including $50,000 for a tattoo-removal program in California. Few projects itemized in the CAGW report are that outrageous, but who cares when finger-pointing is so much fun?
The report includes the Pig Book's "Oinkers of the Year Awards"; for instance, the "Narcissist Award" won by Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings of South Carolina, who spent $14 million on the Hollings Marine Laboratory and another million on the Hollings Cancer Center.
OUR OWN Sen. Dan Inouye received the "Pacific Fleeced Award" for being "one of the most notorious pork-barrel spenders in Congress" with $432 million in pork to his name. Thanks to Inouye, Hawaii ranked second in the nation with $353 in pork per capita, according to CAGW.
The outright winner was Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who brought home the bacon to the tune of $451.3 million. The $711 he brought home for each and every Alaskan earned him the CAGW "Snow Job Award."
If Inouye is such a pork-barrel glutton, how come we're not all wallowing in government waste? Digging into the specifics, I saw $268.3 million, or 62 percent, of the Inouye pig went to Department of Defense projects. For example, there was $42.5 million for the Kahoolawe Island cleanup, more than $84 million for the Pacific Missile Range and $15.3 million for the Federal Health Care Network.
Eliminating defense appropriations, Hawaii's pork per capita drops to $134, still in the top five. But looking at Hawaii's pork list made me wonder how CAGW defines pork.
To make CAGW's list, spending has to meet only one of several criteria. These include not being requested by both chambers of Congress, not being competitively awarded or not being requested by the president. Spending also becomes pork if it bypasses congressional hearings, serves only a local or special interest, or exceeds either the president's budget request or the previous year's funding.
Inouye's pork includes everything from $25,000 for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's monk seal program to $12 million for Honolulu's bus transit system and $6 million to expand Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
There's $100,000 for Wailupe stream flood control, $200,000 for a Kuhio Park juvenile delinquency prevention program and $200,000 to help restore Maui's Iao Theater. There's $250,000 to get seaweed off Kihei's beaches and $300,000 to keep sand on Waikiki's.
Three hundred thousand dollars are earmarked for Falls of Clyde upkeep, and another $300,000 for Kauai trail maintenance. The National Park Service's Native Hawaiian Culture and Arts program get $740,000, and $800,000 goes for a new Filipino Community Center.
There's a million to fight brown tree snakes, another million to upgrade the Big Island's drinking water system and $1.6 million for local law enforcement. There's $3 million to help NOAA protect sea turtles and another $3 million to keep alien species away.
THERE'S much more -- $432 million in all -- but clearly one man's pork is another's tofu.
CAGW says, "both Sen. Stevens and Sen. Inouye are seasoned porkers, four-star generals in the bout for bacon." Inouye is a prominent member of CAGW's "Hall of Shame" and was selected March 2001 "Porker of the Month" for leading a "feeding frenzy at the trough" where "Hawaii raked in 15 times the per capita national average."
Today, as I mail my tax return, I reflect that my wife and I will each pay the IRS many times the $353 in "pork" that CAGW is roasting Inouye for bringing back to Hawaii for us.
Way to go, Dan.
John Flanagan is the Star-Bulletin's contributing editor.
He can be reached at: jflanagan@starbulletin.com.