Word: pork-barrel
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Furthermore, a larger number of representatives with smaller constituencies and narrower interests would increase the potential for pork-barrel spending and inefficiency. Members of the House, in order to curry favor with their constituencies, generally try to direct federal funding toward their own districts through earmarks in legislation. It follows that having more representatives would likely result in increased spending on numerous projects that are not of national significance. Whatever gains in equity are achieved by expansion would be overwhelmed by losses in effectiveness...
...House seat in 1994 with no political experience. Financed his campaign with $100,000 of his own money. Served three terms in Congress, where he repeatedly fought spending increases and pork-barrel spending...
...Elected South Carolina's governor in 2002. Considered something of a quirky showman, he once sneaked two piglets into the state capitol to blast pork-barrel spending. The animals relieved themselves on the statehouse carpet, angering lawmakers, but the public approved of the stunt. Holds five-minute meetings with constituents as part of his "Open Door After Four" policy...
...chronic conflict with South Carolina's GOP-controlled legislature. When TIME ranked him in 2005 as one of the nation's worst state chief executives, it was because his fiscal hard-liner theatrics (carrying piglets under each arm to the door of the state legislature to protest pork-barrel spending) rarely yielded real results. In too many instances, his conservative principles thwarted the economic development of a poor Southern state that has the country's third-highest unemployment rate and some of its most decrepit schools. Still, South Carolina's deeply conservative voters re-elected him in 2006, and last...
...Still, there’s more. A unified Democratic government passed a partisan $787 billion stimulus bill and another $410 billion spending bill. After promising to end the Republican tenure of pork-barrel spending, these massive bills included titanic lists of pork projects. The projected budget deficit for the fiscal year 2009 grew to $1.8 trillion, or a shocking and nearly unprecedented 12.3 percent of our gross domestic product. They then proceeded to pass a new record-breaking $3.6 trillion budget for the upcoming year...