Word: pork-barrel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...American decade of budget deadlock, unfettered spending and unprecedented borrowing. President Reagan, for his part, fought bitterly against tax increases and cuts in the defense budget when both seemed called for. The Democrats, for their part, were slow to compromise on social spending and, like the Republicans, cherished their pork-barrel projects. Corporate America, which had grown content with its domestic marketplace, aggravated the trade deficit by its lack of motivation to sell products abroad. Consumers added to the trouble by developing a ravenous taste for imported goods and credit-card spending. All told, the roaring '80s have been...
...Republican Congressman Robert Walker, the $88 billion highway bill is filled with "page after page of pork-barrel projects." But to drivers stuck on Boston's "distressway," inching along Illinois 121 toward Peoria, or stewing in traffic in hundreds of other communities, funds for new roads, bridges and tunnels cannot come soon enough. Some of the most urgent -- and the most questionable...
...full force of the presidency into his search for that elusive final vote. In fact, as jarring as the defeat was, it could end up strengthening the President: the personal energy he put into defeating the bill reinforced his image as a warrior against Congress's profligate pork-barrel ways, and it is likely to quiet fears that he is detached, out of touch and content to serve out the last 21 months of his presidency as a ceremonial caretaker...
...million here and a million there eventually add up to real money, that is a pretty meager sum alongside the public-works projects that used to be whooped through Congress in the days before the deficit doldrums. As Republican Congressman Jim Bunning of Kentucky cracked, "Calling this a pork-barrel bill is like calling a strip of bacon a luau...
...fuss over the pork-barrel issue masks a significant turnabout in the condition of the nation's highways. In 1982, the last time Congress passed a comprehensive highway bill, the debate was dominated by scare talk of decaying roads and crumbling bridges, complete with suggestions that the nation's transportation system would soon go the way of New York City's abandoned West Side Highway. Experts bandied around figures like $3 trillion for rebuilding America's decaying infrastructure. In truth, the Interstate Highway System was in trouble. Traffic had far outstripped the projections made when the system was initially planned...