Pork Barrel Politics: Per Se Bad?

Two Utah Senators pat themselves on the back for bringin' home the bacon (what there is of it)

Fascinating story in this morning's Salt Lake Tribune, under the headline: "Utah senators proud of pork." We'll incorporate here the opening 'graphs:

WASHINGTON - Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch love their earmarks. And they don't want to give them up.
The Utah Republicans say members of Congress should be splitting up federal dough to send home instead of letting Washington bureaucrats divvy up the funds. And they backed their point late Thursday by joining many of their colleagues in voting against a one-year ban on earmarks.
The proposed prohibition on any earmarks in the fiscal 2009 budget failed by a 71-29 margin. Bennett says he is proud of all the earmarks he has pushed through for Utah, and proud of the Senate for maintaining the constitutional right to the purse strings.
"Opposing earmarks is an attempt by some lawmakers to give the impression of fiscal responsibility when there is none," Bennett said in a statement. "Eliminating earmarks will not reduce overall federal spending, and yet earmarks have become the scapegoat for the government's lack of fiscal discipline."
The rise in the number of earmarks - in addition to several controversial ones like the so-called "bridge to nowhere" - has made them a dirty word in politics. This fiscal year alone, Congress earmarked 11,612 projects costing $17.2 billion, according to the government watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste.
Hatch says he understands that some are opposed to earmarks, but believes that "limited congressionally directed spending" has often proved effective for getting federal dollars for local projects.
"Without this funding, federal spending priorities in Utah would be decided by bureaucrats and other non-Utahns instead of by our elected leaders and local officials," Hatch said.

Although we've in the past leaned toward the intuitive view that the outright abolition of federal earmarks would likewise lead to the reduction in federal spending, we're now sitting on the fence with respect to this issue. We know the basic tendencies of the folks in Congress to spend every dime they can, regardless of any minor roadblocks which are put in their paths. The real question is where the money will be spent. As both our Hon. State Senators suggest, the presently-existing system does at least provide some mechanism (however feeble) for returning some Utah taxpayer dollars to some local projects -- which is probably a good thing -- we believe. We wonder how much of this taxpayer money would come back to Utah in the absence of a system allowing earmarks.

Being the curious type, we resorted to Mother Google, and came up with some interesting information (the most recently available 2005 data), showing Utah as tenth from the bottom of the list in earmarks per state, and eighth from the bottom per capita. Ironically, and assuming that these figures are typical of any given year, this sets us to wondering whether Senators Bennet and Hatch should be applauded for the pittance that they do bring back home, or criticized for failing to bag far more pork.

We don't know the answer to these complicated questions, gentle readers, so perhaps you'll all chime in and tell us what we ought to think. Are congressional earmarks bad per se, or does it all depend on the nature of the earmarked projects? Would the across-the-board abolition of federal earmarks result in a net reduction in federal spending, or would Congress merely find other ways to spend the dough in the federal coffers? In the absence of a system allowing congressional earmarks, would Utah receive a greater share of federal funding, or would Utahns be left with no bacon for breakfast? Wouldn't it make more sense to forget the whole earmarks problem, and instead lobby our legislators for "balanced budget" legislation? And yes, we do know all about the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" boondoggle, and would in that connection invoke the old legal axiom: "Hard cases make bad law."

So many questions; so few answers.

We do hope our gentle readers will deign to help us out on this.