Origins of the Term Pork Barrel

The use of the phrase "pork barrel" to describe dubious government spending dates at least as early as the second half of the 19th century. It initially could refer to any money a government spent, but pork barrel spending soon came to refer to exp💝enditures on projects of questionable value that individual members of Congre𒈔ss pushed through for the benefit of their home districts and their own political gain.

The literal meaning of pork barrel dates to the early 1700s. Before refrigeration, pork was salted and preserved in wooden barrels that held more than 30 gallons each. It's easy to see how "dipping into the pork barrel" became a metaphor for grabbing a share of a very large amount of money.

Early References to Pork Barrel Spending

The first use of the term pork barrel to describe public spending may be found in the 1863 story "The Children of the Public," by the writer and historian Edward Everett Hale.

It was about ten years later that the phrase 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:pork barrel politics came to mean the spending of public funds by a politician for the benefit of a small group of people in order to obtain their support, in the form of votes or campaign donations𒉰.

In modern times, pork barrel spending has come to mean wasteful spending on local public works projects of dubious value, or of value only to a single politician's constituency. In Congress, these are typically achieved by adding an "earmark" to a large bill in hopes of forcing it through unnoticed.

While it wasn't yet called pork barrel spending, Thomas Jefferson condemned the practice in a letter to James Madison in 1796, calling it a "source of boundless patronage to the executive" and a "bottomless abyss of public money."

Examples of Pork Barrel Spending

One of the most famous contemporary 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:examples of pork barrel spending was the so-called Bridge to Nowhere. Congress approved a $223 million earmark for a bridge connecting two small towns in rural Alaska in 2005. The project became a symbol of wasteful spending, and years later was scrapped altogether in favor of upgrading the local ferry system.

Another example was the Big Dig project in Boston, in which a 3.5-mile section of highway was relocated underground. Then-Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, of Massachusetts, secured the first federal funds for the project in 1982. It ultimately cost $15 billion, about five times the initial estimate, and took until the end of 2007 to complete.

The Bottom Line

Pork barrel spending has a long, if not illustrious, history in the U.S. It should be noted that one politician's pork barrel spending is another's valuable constituent service.

The occasional 💯calls for a line item veto forꦺ use by the president is essentially an effort to allow a president to trim pork from bills before they pass into law.

In fact, President Bill Clinton had the authority to use the line-item veto, and did, from 1996 to 1998. In that year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional and struck it down.