I don’t know how many of you are on Jim Nussle’s email list, but yesterday’s edition nearly put me into a coma—its noxious photos, mind numbing stories of lemonade stands and lunches, and exceptional ability to kill the interesting somehow combine the worst aspects of a PowerPoint presentation with granny’s grand canyon slide show. In short—it is an unholy alliance between boredom and idiocy.
Of course, it does provide a few opportunities for fun.
“Jim’s Journal,” as it’s called, tells us that Jim is doing what every other self-respecting candidate in the state does this time of year—he’s spending significant time at the internationally-acclaimed Iowa State fair. Of course, Jim has something else in common with too many politicians—wherever he is, he seems to be at the same tricks.
Indeed, true to form, Jim did what he does best. He served up pork.
Heck, Jim’s been doing it for years.
As House Budget Chairman he presided over the evaporation (er, trickledown?) of hundreds of billions of dollars. Where’d it all go? Sure, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans played a huge part, as did Halliburton contracts. But another often overlooked culprit was the astronomical growth in pork barrel spending that picked up speed in the early 90’s and only accelerated under Nussle’s tenure as HBC.
Now, one can’t blame all pork on Nussle—Congress is stuffed with chronic earmarkers like a pig with an apple down its throat—but when Jim first got to the hill in 1991, spending on pet project earmarks totaled 3.1 billion dollars. In 2006, that number was 29.3 billion dollars. In his five years as House Budget Chairman, pork barrel spending went up in every one. In 2001, when he took control of the Committee, earmarks hovered around 7,000. By 2005, that number had nearly doubled.
And earmarks under the reign of king Nussle have been especially egregious. According to the conservative Citizens Against Government Waste, this year’s budget includes:
$13,500,000 for the International Fund for Ireland, which helped finance the World Toilet Summit; $6,435,000 for wood utilization research; $1,000,000 for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative; and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C.
Thankfully, Nussle’s reign in the House is over. Here’s to making sure we don’t let him do for Iowa what he did in Congress. Iowans—let’s not be what we eat.
P.S. Do us a favor Jim—keep the “journal” to yourself. Diaries are self-indulgent.
August 12th, 2006
The Register editorializes today on the apparent tension between traditional Republican talking points and actual Republican performance:
This was a bizarre week in federal budget politics, as usual. Everything about the federal budget is bizarre. To wit:
President Bush bragged about “reducing” the red ink this year to “only” $296 billion. That will be the fourth largest deficit in history and only a modest improvement from last year’s $318 billion deficit. That’s hardly cause for celebration.
Locally, Republican congressional candidate Jeff Lamberti said pork-barrel spending is out of control and the federal budget process is broken.
He got that right, but it takes a large dose of chutzpah for Lamberti to cite it as a reason for people to elect him instead of Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell.
Recall that the last time the Democrats controlled Congress, they produced healthy budget surpluses that put the country on a path toward paying down the national debt.
When Republicans took control of Congress and the White House, they promptly boosted spending while cutting taxes, producing the worst fiscal mess of modern times.
When Republican challengers in Congressional races run their “we need a change” campaigns (which every challenger’s campaign will at some point say), whom do they think they’re railing against? Maybe someone needs to ask Jeff Lamberti exactly which parts of the Bush (and Nussle) budgets he’s against in specific enough terms that he actually has to answer the question. Odds are he couldn’t think of anything he’d want to mention by name.
July 13th, 2006
So Congress.org just released congressional Power Rankings, and lo and behold, Iowa is doing pretty well.
Congressmen (and women) were ranked according to 15 ‘characteristics of power,’ including things like positions, influence, and legislative activity. You guys should probably just check out the background page to learn about their methodology, but here are some highlights:
In addition, the project team recognized that Members of Congress can exert or possess power that can’t be measured by these standard measures. Therefore, we created the “Sizzle/Fizzle” factor. For example, Sizzle factors can include a legislator’s unique background and experience (Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)) or relationships (Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY)) or newfound popularity (Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)) that somehow adds weight to their power that is not scored in the other categories. In contrast, Fizzle factors can be applied to legislators who have seen their power diminish during the year, despite their position, due to scandal or other factors that impair the ability of the member to be effective. This was the only subjective criteria and was not weighted heavily in the overall ratings.
…
The Power Rankings project team acknowledges that Members of Congress sometimes exercise power in ways that cannot be seen or measured. The most tangible example of this is the ability to steer federal funding to their state through the appropriations process – called “earmarking.”
After these and other such stunning insights into the congressional processes, they came up with the following results:
Top five Senators:
1. Bill Frist (R-TN) 96.75
2. Arlen Specter (R-PA) 82.31
3. John McCain (R-AZ) 80.94
4. Charles Grassley (R-IA) 78.50
5. Harry Reid (D-NV) 71.06
Top five Representatives:
1. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) 97.25
2. Tom DeLay (R-TX) 63.50
3. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) 60.57
4. Don Young (R-AK) 55.00
5. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) 48.00
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here first, Chuck is the 4th most powerful Senator, making Iowa proud–well, sort of.
Other surprises? Well, Tom DeLay is the #2 rep, although, one must suspect he has a pretty high Fizzle Factor, seeing as he resigned from office.
So how does Iowa stack up? Well, our fine state as a whole ranked third most powerful, with 28.92, after Nevada with 29.76 and New Mexico with 28.96. The scores come from the average of the state’s congressional delegate’s scores. Harkin weighed in at 37.94, which puts him at 35. For reps, we got Nussle at 54th with 23.44, Leach is at 69th place with 22.00, Latham is 190 with 15.50, and King is 208 with 14.94, and Grinnell’s own Boswell had a whopping 10.12, making him the 302nd most powerful representative.
Okay, so now you’re asking, so what? You’ve soldiered through this kinda long post full of numbers whose meanings are at best ill-defined and whose significance is probably illusory and you are wondering what this all means. Well, me too. Why did Congress.org do this? I don’t know! Can power be quantified? Probably not! Does this mean Iowa is going to be the proud recipient of more pork-barrell spending? Again, probably not (plus, don’t we produce pork?). Is Nussle going to call up Boswell to boast his numerical superiority tonight? One can only imagine.
May 16th, 2006
