Camouflaged pork

The new politics of national defense will go on display over the next several weeks as the House and Senate mark up President Bush's request for an extra $27 billion to fight terrorism at home and abroad.

Appropriators will package some pork in the new and popular "homeland defense" wrapper by redirecting some of that spending away from Bush's priorities to their own pet projects back home. How much of the $27 billion will turn into pork? And how will Bush respond? Those are the big unknowns.

The Republicans who control the House will try to keep Bush's supplemental request pretty much intact as a sign of party unity. But the Democratic-controlled Senate is unlikely to show such restraint.

There, the homeland defense king, Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., has passed the word to his 13 subcommittee chairmen that they don't need to stick to Bush's priorities and are free to move the supplemental's defense and nondefense money around. However, Byrd has reserved the right to disapprove proposed changes, Senate insiders say.

Because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to look as if they're breaking the bank in an election year, the fight will not be over whether to appropriate more than Bush's requested $27 billion. Instead, it'll be over how to spend the money below that ceiling. Under Bush's plan, the Pentagon gets $14 billion, with the remaining $13 billion spread over an array of government departments handling homeland security. Members of authorizing committees will be relegated to watching from the sidelines as appropriators divvy up the $27 billion.

"There are really now three kinds of senators: Republicans and Democrats and appropriators," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in decrying the practice of allowing the Appropriations Committees to approve multibillion-dollar projects without any hearings or other input from the authorizing committees, such as the Senate Armed Services Committee on which he serves. McCain cited an example-appropriators approved an Air Force proposal to lease Boeing 767 transport planes for $20 billion without bothering to let the Armed Services panels examine the deal first. Authorizing committees have "now become sophisticated debating societies and have really nothing to do with the allocation of funds," McCain complained.

One Senate insider warned that lawmakers are pushing through so many unexamined pet projects under the guise of homeland defense that "it will be three or four years before the horror stories come out and tell us about all the money we put down rat holes."

Bush and Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. are well aware of this accelerating trend, and the president has threatened to veto the fiscal 2002 supplemental if the lawmakers go hog-wild in asserting their own priorities. Bush last week set the stage for Republicans to blame Democrats for unbalancing the federal budget if they exceed his spending requests:

"If we restrain spending, even though we're at war, even though our economy is still clunking along, if we react responsibly, we can return to a balanced budget--something I want--as early as 2004. But tough choices on Capitol Hill have to be made." Washington, he added, shouldn't "get into needless partisan screeching over the budget.... I've got a tool, and that's called a veto."

Earlier, in a March 27 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Daniels called the fiscal 2002 supplemental "our first test" of Congress's commitment to restraining spending. "The president has been very clear, whether it's this supplemental or the 13 bills to follow, that he is willing to work very practically ... with Congress about the composition of spending as long as his top priorities are respected. But he is not going to let spending get out of control."

Given those warnings from the White House, the Democrats would be playing into Bush's hands if they attempted to increase the president's $27 billion request. And shifting money away from requests clearly linked to the war in Afghanistan wouldn't make political sense. The apparent untouchables in Bush's request include $7.2 billion for ongoing military operations in Afghanistan; $4.1 billion for the call-ups of reservists and National Guard members; and $2.1 billion for weapons, communications, and intelligence-gathering. So those lawmakers looking for money for their state's airports, firefighters, and hospitals most likely will dip into homeland security funds for other government departments, including Agriculture, State, and Transportation.

In response to the recent veto threats, a number of lawmakers have reminded Bush that it is his job to propose and theirs to dispose. So this "first test," as Daniels called it, will be a test of wills in which one politician's homeland defense will be another politician's pork.

McCain denounces pork barrel spending--especially earmarking--as "war profiteering." (Earmarking is the practice of specifying in law how a certain amount of money must be spent, rather than giving the executive branch discretion.) "It's like any other evil. You either check it and eliminate it, or it gets worse and worse," McCain said.

Bush has just drawn a line in the sand by demanding spending restraint. As lawmakers mark up the fiscal 2002 supplemental appropriation, will Congress march across that line carrying the banner of homeland defense? And if Congress does cross the line, will the President exercise his veto power for the first time or take the easy way out by caving in?