GOP Spares Some Pork in Drive to Trim Spending

After months of bold talk about transforming the shape of government by killing hundreds of federal programs, Republicans in Congress are quietly granting stays of execution to an array of favored agencies, pet programs and pork-barrel projects.

Indeed, Republicans are cutting a wide swath through the budget as they advance their campaign to shrink the federal bureaucracy, slay the deficit and limit the reach of government. But one by one, lawmakers are cutting deals to spare specific programs included on the GOP’s initial hit list.

Eleventh-hour reprieves have been granted to hardy perennials like the Great Society-era Appalachian Regional Commission, which tries to recruit new employers to that hard-pressed area; pet programs like the Capitol’s Botanic Garden, a favorite of several congressional spouses; bureaucratic bastions like the Department of Energy, and local goodies like a squash court at a Navy shipyard in Washington state.

While these early survivors of the budget battle might represent exceptions rather than the rule, they are an emblem of the formidable obstacles Republican budget-balancers face as they turn from anti-deficit generalities to particulars. And the Darwinian struggle is likely to grow more intense in coming weeks: Once the House and Senate pass a combined budget blueprint later this week, lawmakers will begin work in earnest on the appropriations bills that make specific spending cuts mandated by the budget outline.

The House Appropriations Committee is about halfway through drafting the 13 bills needed annually to finance the government, cutting billions already from the budget. The committee has proposed eliminating at least three dozen programs ranging from the Bureau of Mines to the Interstate Commerce Commission to the Delaware River Basin Commission. And it has begun phasing out the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.

But some of biggest targets have been left intact or only pruned, not uprooted--to the dismay of Republicans who want to make lasting changes in the shape of government in addition to saving money.

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“One thing we know about cutting rather than eliminating bureaucracy,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a leader of a group of senators and House members who are monitoring the appropriations process for wasteful spending. “It’s just like cropping weeds: As soon as you turn your back they will grow and flourish.”

Members of the big, rambunctious freshman class of House Republicans, most of them elected on stridently anti-government platforms, are particularly distressed to see fellow Republicans continue to lard appropriations bills with pork-barrel spending.

“Are we meeting the budget target numbers? We are,” said Mark W. Neumann (R-Wis.), a freshman who sits on the Appropriations Committee. “But there are still excessive amounts of wasteful spending.”

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.) acknowledged that he had to fight his panel’s continued reputation as a bastion of old-fashioned log-rolling. But he defended the committee’s work, saying that it has kept spending well within the stringent targets set by the budget-balancing plan.

“There is an innate distrust of Appropriations among our newcomers,” he said. “But we are, within our human frailty, working in a conscientious effort to downsize government.”

The process will be a long and difficult one--and will open deep divisions among Republicans for the first time since they took control of Congress--if the initial appropriations debates are any indication. Last week, the House took three contentious days to pass what is usually the most non-controversial spending bill--financing for construction of military facilities.

Lawmakers of both parties protested that the bill, one of the first appropriations to come to the House floor this year, would increase spending by $2.5 billion. “This is an ominous trend,” said Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton), who with McCain heads the self-proclaimed “porkbusters” group.

During debate on the military construction bill, the porkbusters succeeded in killing $14 million to buy land for an Army museum and in cutting $7 million for new housing for Air Force officers. The GOP split on the vote, a stark departure from the remarkably disciplined party unity that Republicans showed during their productive first 100 days in power.

But the anti-pork forces failed to kill several other projects, including funding to add facilities for squash, badminton, aerobics and paddle ball to the gym at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. “There is a YMCA less than a mile away,” said Royce, who led the charge against the project. But the House refused to kill the $10.4-million project after several lawmakers made the embarrassing observation that Royce himself had sought funding for projects in his own district that some considered pork.

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Many more battles are expected this week, including a bid to overturn an Appropriations Committee decision to keep the Appalachian Regional Commission alive as part of funding for energy programs and other public works.

The House Budget Committee had recommended abolishing the 30-year-old, $282-million commission, saying it was duplicative and that Appalachia was no more deserving of special federal attention than other poor areas of the country.

But that did not convince the Appropriations Committee, where the agency had a well-placed advocate. Rep. Harold Rogers of Kentucky, second-ranking Republican on the subcommittee overseeing the commission, is a staunch defender of the program, which channels aid into every county of his impoverished district. The committee did cut the commission’s funding in half but that was not enough for junior Republicans, who are likely to offer an amendment to kill the agency when the energy appropriations bill goes to the floor later this week.

The Appropriations Committee also backed away from Republican promises to eliminate entire Cabinet agencies. The panel voted to cut deeply into energy programs but would keep the Energy Department intact. That puts the committee squarely at odds with GOP freshmen, who have made eliminating Energy and other Cabinet departments practically their class project.

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Some of the programs targeted for elimination in the House budget have not just survived but flourished in the Appropriations panel. As part of the GOP drive against “corporate welfare,” the Budget Committee called for abolishing or contracting to private firms export promotion programs such as the Overseas Private Investment Corp., which provides financing and insurance to U.S. companies that invest abroad. But appropriators tripled funding for OPIC’s guaranteed loans, which have the support of Appropriations Chairman Livingston and Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-Ala.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that handles foreign aid.

“Every step along the way you find the Appropriations Committee being huge defenders of the status quo,” said Rep. Scott L. Klug (R-Wis.), a leading advocate of putting OPIC in private hands. Klug expects to win major changes in the committee’s OPIC proposal when the foreign aid bill goes to the House floor today.

In some instances, the forces at work in the budget debate are closer to home. Livingston got a familial nudge about funding for the Botanic Gardens, one of the few programs in the legislative branch appropriation bill that was not cut. Livingston’s wife, Bonnie, has been active in private fund raising for the facility, which would get $10 million to help renovate its conservatory.

Livingston acknowledged that the garden might seem like a luxury at a time when scores of programs for the needy are being cut, but he shrugged off such complaints. “We are spending a great deal of taxpayer money,” he said. “We’re always going to be subject to criticism.”