Word: pork-barrel
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Carter's only serious crime, then, is Optimism in the first degree. Despite his lust for Washington's power, he was an outsider in the true sense of the world. Oblivious to elitist protocol and disdainful of pork-barrel politics, he innocently seemed to believe that solving the nation's problems was more important to Congressmen than their re-election worries, debts to special interests and status in the Capital Hill Club. He was wrong. The new breed of young, educated, "professional" Congressmen have gained the appearance of competence (due mostly to their staff's), but they are practically incapable...
...West $1.20. One reason for the disparity is that many corporations have their headquarters in the Northeast and Midwest, from which they pay taxe based on their total national sales. But there are other factors, including the success of persuasive Southern and Western Congressmen in winning defense funds and pork-barrel projects for the folks back home...
Despite these drawbacks, public works can give a boost to financially strapped areas simply by an injection of much needed capital. That is, if Congress can avoid treating-or mistreating -the program as pork-barrel politics. When Congress approved the $2 billion public works appropriation, it required that 30% of the money go to communities with unemployment rates below the national average. Says one of the Senate Public Works Committee staffers who drafted the legislation: "It was a political necessity. You can't have all the money going to Newark. The Congressman from Scarsdale wants a cut too." Outgoing...
...series of coalition Cabinets involving Republicans, Social Democrats and Socialists. The small reformist Republican Party is particularly interested in fiscal conservatism. The Social Democrats are vigorously anti-Communist and pro-Europe. The Socialists are continually torn between an ideological affinity with the Communists, their pro-Western loyalties and pork-barrel reasons for remaining in government...
Along with farm subsidies, shipbuilding subsidies and harbor projects, another well-intentioned federal-aid program can be added to the long list of those that have degenerated into pork-barrel giveaways. It is the black-lung program, which is financed by the U.S. taxpayer. Designed to compensate the families of coal miners, dead or alive, who were victims of the debilitating coal-dust disease, the program has become a much-abused boondoggle...