Road Bill Reflects The Power Of Pork

After the 2003 confrontation over spending, White House budget officials reached a compromise of sorts with House Republican leaders, budget experts say. GOP leaders, especially in the House, wanted to continue earning lawmakers' loyalties and favors with pet projects, but Bush had to hold down domestic spending. The president would tone down his criticism of lawmakers' pet projects as long as Congress stayed roughly within the White House's bottom-line spending limits.

"They recognized they would be subject to a certain amount of pork" under that compromise, said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste. "I'm not sure they were expecting as much as they're seeing now."

In the years since the 2003 budget was introduced, pork-barrel spending has climbed from $20.1 billion to $27.3 billion, with the number of earmarked projects rising from 8,341 to 13,999, according to Schatz's group.

In Illinois yesterday, Bush appeared with one of the most influential beneficiaries of earmarked spending: House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who secured $207 million for the "Prairie Parkway" through Kane and Kendall counties.

Jan Strasma, chairman of Citizens Against the Sprawlway, which has fought the project for years, said the parkway exemplifies precisely what Bush once vowed to combat. The Illinois Department of Transportation is only two years into a five-year study into the project and has not yet determined whether a highway is needed or improvements to existing roads would suffice.

"What we have here is the politicians and lobbyists in Washington doing transportation planning while transportation planning is going on at the state and local level," he said.

The new law enjoyed widespread backing in the House and Senate, a rare show of bipartisanship. And most lawmakers wanted to spend considerably more.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has estimated that it would take $500 billion over six years to maintain the country's weathered transportation system and make substantial progress against congestion. With that number out of reach, House Transportation Committee leaders produced legislation in 2002 that would have spent $375 billion, enough to maintain the existing system "and just begin to address congestion" issues, said committee spokesman Steve Hansen.

Bush at that time said he would reject any bill over $256 billion. Then he lifted his limit to $284 billion, and ultimately signed a bill with a price tag that is $286 billion only because of a gimmick that hides additional costs of up to $9 billion, Schatz said.

Bush's signature "encourages members of Congress to engage in pork-barrel spending on a massive scale, because there's no restraint on the part of the leadership or the White House," Schatz concluded. "I don't know how else to say it."

VandeHei reported from Chicago.