Scraping the Bottom of the Pork Barrel

After years of reporting Lamentations of poverty from city, county and state government officials, I visited a richer, more generous world this week.

On Wednesday, in Room 2362 of the Rayburn House Office building, I was able to forget the last 12 years of California parsimony. It was as if there had never been a Gov. Ronald Reagan, Proposition 13, Jerry Brown’s Era of Limits or George Deukmejian’s gleeful blue penciling.

An open-handed House energy and water development subcommittee was hearing requests for money to build public works projects.

It was a committee that could not say no.

That was a lucky break for the audience. This has been California week in the Capitol and supplicants from water agencies, flood control districts and other construction-minded public agencies have hit Washington with a tide of requests they wouldn’t have dared to present to officials at home.

The visiting Californians happily watched as Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) quickly won approval for money to expand the Sepulveda Basin park in the San Fernando Valley. Similarly, it took just minutes for Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) to bring home another appropriation for the Valley’s Hansen Dam recreation area project. And not a word of dissent was uttered when Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) asked for $4.3 million for the King Harbor breakwater in Redondo Beach.

There were many reasons for these easy victories. But, as we shall see, the feast appears to be coming to a rapid end. For Californians in the nation’s capital, there’s a new, leaner day coming.

Despite eight years of Reaganism and 15 months of the “read-my-lips,” anti-tax attitude of the Bush Administration, there’s still a huge and growing flow of revenue into the U.S. Treasury. And Democratic control of Congress means that there’s money for Democrats respectful of the leadership.

California has been able to get a substantial share of the money. A major reason for this is that its large delegation includes many House leaders.

The California move into House leadership began in earnest after the 1981 Democrat-controlled state Legislature gerrymandered congressional districts to assure Democratic dominance of the state’s congressional delegation. Californians who came to the House as wide-eyed greenhorns early in this period kept winning, and they now head money-distributing committees and subcommittees.

For instance, Beilenson, Berman and Levine made their pleas to an old Democratic pal, Rep. Vic Fazio of Sacramento, the subcommittee chairman. They had all started in Sacramento as state legislators.

Another example of how this sort of politics works can be seen in the career of Democratic Rep. Glenn M. Anderson, who represents San Pedro. Anderson, as plain as his working-class constituency, played the inside game well and became friends with the Democratic powers. Over the years, he moved up the ladder in the Public Works Committee, the prime pork barrel dispenser. Today, he is chairman.

He used his influence on the committee to provide money for many job-producing projects back home. While many scoffed at the idea of a subway in Los Angeles, Anderson brought in the federal funds for Metro Rail. When state dollars weren’t available for modernization of the Harbor Freeway, Anderson persuaded Congress to pay. The Century Freeway and an assortment of huge improvements at the harbor also were his babies.

Now comes the sobering epilogue to this pageant of bounty. Democratic congressmen told me that they were finding it harder to win these public works grants for California in view of the state’s consistent refusal to raise taxes. Colleagues from other states are objecting.

I saw the evidence of that when a delegation from the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce met with Anderson and his highway construction subcommittee chairman, Norman Y. Mineta of San Jose. Cliff Moore, the airport general manager, asked about federal help to build the business community’s latest public works dream, a freeway or high-speed rail transit system through the Valley to the city’s proposed new international airport in Palmdale.

Anderson, the old builder, liked the project. The younger Mineta, a skillful political operator more attuned to current realities, shook his head. No, said Mineta, reciting the arithmetic of state taxes: California was at the bottom in the size of its gas tax. He continued to shake his head as he delivered the bad news. California will have to raise its gas tax.

As it turned out, while some traveling Californians got a taste of congressional generosity, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce visitors received a more relevant lesson: Even the congressional pork barrel has a bottom.