The term “pork barrel spending” is ripe for vicious political cartooning. So, too, unfortunately, are the sad realities behind this unusual phrase.
The Founding Fathers never intended for the general welfare clause (“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes… to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States…”) to be used to justify endless local or regional spending, declared Kentucky Senator Rand Paul from the Senate floor. “It has to be for the general welfare of all people of the United States,” he said. “You can tax people generally, but you have to spend the money generally…. It can’t be for Bubba Gump’s shrimp museum in Louisiana.”
With the U.S. government exhausting trillions of dollars annually, it's hardly shocking that we've strayed from this principle. No longer do politicians ponder, “How does this benefit the nation as a whole?” Instead, their primary concern is, “How might this buy me votes?”
In his recent congressional monologue, Sen. Paul exposed several shocking examples of this kind of spending, including a recent $460 billion spending package, which reportedly contained over 6,000 earmarks.
Decades ago, he said, Senator William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, awarded his “Golden Fleece” Award to government officials who squandered money, including 27k on a study to investigate why prison inmates try to escape, 6k for a guide on how to use Worcestershire sauce, and 100k towards a research grant to study whether sunfish that drink tequila were more aggressive than sunfish that drink gin. Today, that same pattern of reckless spending continues apace, only now, the problem is worse.
“There was always a certain amount of punch to Proxmire’s proclamations,” Paul remembered. “We could laugh at the lunacy of government. But that was in 1988 when our overall debt was only $2 trillion. Now, it’s 34, going on 35, as we speak.”
“Perhaps government waste is not so funny anymore,” he added.
Among the over 6,000 earmarks contained within the spending bill, the senator from Kentucky laid out his “terrible ten”:
- $4 million for a waterfront walkway in New Jersey
- $3.5 million for Detroit’s Thanksgiving Parade float maker’s new headquarters
- $1.75 million for the Met (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) in New York City
- $1 million for an environmental justice center in New York City
- $500,000 for gardens in San Francisco
- $1 million to a non-profit in Minnesota to build a coffee shop and a greenhouse for refugees
- $1 million to help San Francisco organic dairy farmers
- $500,000 for a “cybercrime vehicle” for the Honolulu police department
- $1.2 million for bike path resurfacing in Rhode Island
- $209,000 for HVAC replacement for the “Charles Town Opera House” in West Virginia
The above expenditures, along with thousands of others, were included in a bill purportedly designed to avert a government shutdown. Sen. Paul stands out as one of the rare elected officials in Washington who consistently opposes such spending. Yet, it's glaringly evident that not even his persistent and well-intentioned efforts will suffice to address Washington's endemic spending problem.
As a Convention of States endorser, Rand Paul understands this. “Years of abuse and overreach by the judicial, legislative and executive branches of the federal government have obliterated the enumerated powers established by our founders and made a mockery of the 10th Amendment rights granted to the states and the people,” he proclaimed in his official Convention of States endorsement statement. "That’s why I support the Convention of States Project to restore the original constitutional limits on federal power by calling a limited convention to propose amendments to rein in our out-of-control federal government.”
To unite with the senator in advocating for Convention of States and leading the charge to eliminate wasteful government spending, sign the petition below and take action today!
