5 ms·

How can we create new incentives to discourage this behavior and to encourage infrastructure projects that provide jobs as well as create superlinear value?

Analemma_ 6y ago
We did: pork spending was mostly outlawed in 2011 (the F-35 dates from way before that). But as it turns out, the cure was almost as bad as the disease. Getting rid of pork has accelerated hyper-partisanship and dysfunctional gridlock, because without it there's no incentive to ever try to reach a deal with the other side instead of digging in on no-compromise radicalism to please your base.
- throwanem 6y ago
  > pork spending was mostly outlawed in 2011 Is there a longer discussion of this that you can link somewhere? I remember the phrase as a derogatory commonplace in adults' political discussion when I was a child, but the concept seems to have drifted out of the discourse since, and having now had my attention drawn to its absence I'd be interested to find out more about why.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    There's definitely still pork. I mean, look at how many pet projects were included in Covid relief funding. Pork is the idea of stuffing an unrelated project to benefit your local district or state (and thus, the politician's reelection chances) into a bigger bill that is unrelated to that expense. Like the most famous one was the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" that would have cost $400 million: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
    - paulmd 6y ago
      That dates to 2005, so you are not really contradicting grandparent's point that this was mostly outlawed in 2011 (and that this has accelerated hyperpartisanship by removing an incentive for compromise).
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        Grandparent never pointed to what law they were talking about. They just made an offhanded, unverified remark. I also pointed out that a lot superfluous pork was included in Covid funding. "Pork" was never outlawed. It's not even a formally defined thing. If you think politicians can't figure out how to wiggle pet projects into huge multi trillion dollar spending bills then you really ought to tune into C-Span more often.
    - djur 6y ago
      What pet projects in Covid relief funding are you talking about?
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/531294-congresss-pork-filled-covid-relief-bill https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/531294-congresss-pork-fi... This is the outdated proposal that didn't pass. But the current proposal is double this. I've tried to tune out politics for a while but you can be sure that pork is in a $1.9 trillion spending bill as sure as the sun rises.
        djur 6y ago
        OK, thanks for making it clear that you don't know whether the bill contains pork or not.
- adolph 6y ago
  I believe you refer to a specific method of appropriations called "earmarks" which are often synonymous with pork barrel spending. https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/senate-dems-give-in-on-earmark-ban-048623 https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/senate-dems-give-in-o...
- spiralx 6y ago
  Plus one state's useful new spending is 49 states' pork, meaning that it's always easy to label anything as being evidence of government waste and corruption. But earmarks served as a useful way for states to get federal involvement in local issues that otherwise would never see the light of day, so their loss not only reduced the ability to get major things done, but also to get even tiny things done. Earmarks are supposedly coming back this year though.
tastyfreeze 6y ago
I don't think it is possible to discourage federal contracts being awarded to the benefit of a particular state. If a state is home to a company with the expertise to complete a project the contract can't just be awarded to a another state that doesn't. The best we could do is change the way contract funding is performed. Cost-plus pricing without an upper bound is a huge issue. This type of contract encourages bidders to bid low on cost and make up for it with project extensions. Of course cost-plus is preferred by bidders as they can guarantee a minimum of profit since cost is already covered. However, fixed price contracts are better from the perspective of the government spending. The spend is known up front. It is up to the bidders to determine if they can make a profit or not. Ideally the government shouldn't care if the bidder is making a profit. It is their duty to spend public funds frugally. Cost-plus makes it impossible to reign in contract spending without terminating the contract.
Spooky23 6y ago
The easiest answer is probably public financing of elections. Because Members of Congress basically need to continuously raise money, there’s always an incentive to spread the wealth among congressional districts. For the F35, I can think of one company in a rural area who fabricates some metal component for the project. Because of the way it is contracted, acceptance standards, etc they sell it for something like 50x it’s value of you were to order it, and whomever gets the part spends even more to receive it. Planes are small and have lots of parts, so they suffer more from these issues. We’re still ok at building warships, because you can’t build a shipyard in some coal town in Kentucky.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Public financing would help as a component with corporate lobbyists but pork barrels wouldn't be affected. I use the term with a slight distinction - pork barrels are for parochial voter influnce while an "industrial complex" involves a company's interest in exchange for political benefits. The two may overlap if what helps the company also gets votes in itself. A stereotypical but perhaps unfair example of both (as I am uncertain of actual lobbying in the period) would be Detroit in its heyday - it would have a sizeable base of factory workers locally and large connected auto companies. The problem of pork barrels is that it gets them votes directly by making things worse for everybody else in exchange for local benefits. Disproportionate representation is what enables it as a tactic or at least makes it more disastrous. Something which serves the interests of 30% of the population is closer to benefitting the whole than one for 3% of the population.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    I would agree that it isn't magic. Keep in mind that one man's pork is another's bacon. Pork is part of the political process. In the modern environment, material pork barrel spending is at the corporate/national level. Most congressional districts due to gerrymandering or demographics are very secure... the era of political machines handing out turkeys is gone. If the craven corruption around defense contracting was only 80% as wasteful as it is today, you could give every member of congress a substantial slush fund to waste and still save money. Plus you would have working fighter jets that are able to compete with countries like Russia, that has a GDP equivalent to Texas but seems to be able to procure weapons.

Analemma_ 6y ago

We did: pork spending was mostly outlawed in 2011 (the F-35 dates from way before that). But as it turns out, the cure was almost as bad as the disease. Getting rid of pork has accelerated hyper-partisanship and dysfunctional gridlock, because without it there's no incentive to ever try to reach a deal with the other side instead of digging in on no-compromise radicalism to please your base.

throwanem 6y ago
> pork spending was mostly outlawed in 2011 Is there a longer discussion of this that you can link somewhere? I remember the phrase as a derogatory commonplace in adults' political discussion when I was a child, but the concept seems to have drifted out of the discourse since, and having now had my attention drawn to its absence I'd be interested to find out more about why.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  There's definitely still pork. I mean, look at how many pet projects were included in Covid relief funding. Pork is the idea of stuffing an unrelated project to benefit your local district or state (and thus, the politician's reelection chances) into a bigger bill that is unrelated to that expense. Like the most famous one was the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" that would have cost $400 million: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
  - paulmd 6y ago
    That dates to 2005, so you are not really contradicting grandparent's point that this was mostly outlawed in 2011 (and that this has accelerated hyperpartisanship by removing an incentive for compromise).
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Grandparent never pointed to what law they were talking about. They just made an offhanded, unverified remark. I also pointed out that a lot superfluous pork was included in Covid funding. "Pork" was never outlawed. It's not even a formally defined thing. If you think politicians can't figure out how to wiggle pet projects into huge multi trillion dollar spending bills then you really ought to tune into C-Span more often.
  - djur 6y ago
    What pet projects in Covid relief funding are you talking about?
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/531294-congresss-pork-filled-covid-relief-bill https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/531294-congresss-pork-fi... This is the outdated proposal that didn't pass. But the current proposal is double this. I've tried to tune out politics for a while but you can be sure that pork is in a $1.9 trillion spending bill as sure as the sun rises.
      - djur 6y ago
        OK, thanks for making it clear that you don't know whether the bill contains pork or not.
adolph 6y ago
I believe you refer to a specific method of appropriations called "earmarks" which are often synonymous with pork barrel spending. https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/senate-dems-give-in-on-earmark-ban-048623 https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/senate-dems-give-in-o...
spiralx 6y ago
Plus one state's useful new spending is 49 states' pork, meaning that it's always easy to label anything as being evidence of government waste and corruption. But earmarks served as a useful way for states to get federal involvement in local issues that otherwise would never see the light of day, so their loss not only reduced the ability to get major things done, but also to get even tiny things done. Earmarks are supposedly coming back this year though.

tastyfreeze 6y ago

I don't think it is possible to discourage federal contracts being awarded to the benefit of a particular state. If a state is home to a company with the expertise to complete a project the contract can't just be awarded to a another state that doesn't. The best we could do is change the way contract funding is performed. Cost-plus pricing without an upper bound is a huge issue. This type of contract encourages bidders to bid low on cost and make up for it with project extensions. Of course cost-plus is preferred by bidders as they can guarantee a minimum of profit since cost is already covered. However, fixed price contracts are better from the perspective of the government spending. The spend is known up front. It is up to the bidders to determine if they can make a profit or not. Ideally the government shouldn't care if the bidder is making a profit. It is their duty to spend public funds frugally. Cost-plus makes it impossible to reign in contract spending without terminating the contract.

Spooky23 6y ago

The easiest answer is probably public financing of elections. Because Members of Congress basically need to continuously raise money, there’s always an incentive to spread the wealth among congressional districts. For the F35, I can think of one company in a rural area who fabricates some metal component for the project. Because of the way it is contracted, acceptance standards, etc they sell it for something like 50x it’s value of you were to order it, and whomever gets the part spends even more to receive it. Planes are small and have lots of parts, so they suffer more from these issues. We’re still ok at building warships, because you can’t build a shipyard in some coal town in Kentucky.

Nasrudith 6y ago
Public financing would help as a component with corporate lobbyists but pork barrels wouldn't be affected. I use the term with a slight distinction - pork barrels are for parochial voter influnce while an "industrial complex" involves a company's interest in exchange for political benefits. The two may overlap if what helps the company also gets votes in itself. A stereotypical but perhaps unfair example of both (as I am uncertain of actual lobbying in the period) would be Detroit in its heyday - it would have a sizeable base of factory workers locally and large connected auto companies. The problem of pork barrels is that it gets them votes directly by making things worse for everybody else in exchange for local benefits. Disproportionate representation is what enables it as a tactic or at least makes it more disastrous. Something which serves the interests of 30% of the population is closer to benefitting the whole than one for 3% of the population.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  I would agree that it isn't magic. Keep in mind that one man's pork is another's bacon. Pork is part of the political process. In the modern environment, material pork barrel spending is at the corporate/national level. Most congressional districts due to gerrymandering or demographics are very secure... the era of political machines handing out turkeys is gone. If the craven corruption around defense contracting was only 80% as wasteful as it is today, you could give every member of congress a substantial slush fund to waste and still save money. Plus you would have working fighter jets that are able to compete with countries like Russia, that has a GDP equivalent to Texas but seems to be able to procure weapons.