Pork

In last week’s post on holds I mentioned that a senator was blocking action in the Senate by placing a hold on 70 presidential nominees. The reason he placed this blanket hold was to secure government funding of projects in his home state.
Such projects are commonly referred to as pork or pork-barrel spending in the US — they have various other names the world over such as election pork, election sausage, electoral alms, election sweetener, or simply patronage. In essence, pork is a derogatory term used to refer to the appropriation of government funds to finance local projects. And, unfortunately, pork-barrel spending has a long and sordid history in Washington, DC.
When a politician engages in so-called pork barrel politics, the intent is to provide a concrete benefit for his/her constituents in tacit exchange for their political support. The primary and most visible benefit is job creation.
The funding of pork projects appropriates government spending for a project in a localized area, but spreads the cost among all taxpayers, nationwide. Examples of such projects are agricultural subsidies, such as those which plague the US and EU, public works projects, research grants, and defense contracts and projects like those behind the hold placed on President Obama’s nominees by Senator Shelby earlier this month.
Citizens Against Government Waste has set forth a number of criteria that can be used to determine whether government spending constitutes pork, including that the spending was not specifically authorized, not competitively awarded, serves only local interests, or greatly exceeds the administration’s (i.e. the President’s) budget request.