Up to our eyeballs in pork

Washington ritual follows the passage of almost every appropriations bill. Congressional staffers dismayed by the pork larded through the measure alert journalists.A handful of selfdeclared "pork buster" legislators give speeches and release lists of objectionable items in the legislation.

Then, newspapers print two types of stories. Most mock the spending, as did The Washington Post, when Congress passed the 2003 omnibus appropriations bill, with a Feb. 17 story, "From Hill with Love, a Platter of Bacon." The article noted the silly stuff: $2 million for honey bee labs, $500,000 for recreational lakes, and $600,000 for boathouses. Other articles express outrage at the waste, the backdoor methods, and brazenness of Congress' senior appropriators, as did The Washington Post on Feb. 12. In "More Pork," a story about the same bill, the newspaper related the appalling list of special interest spending that Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, stuffed into the measure for his home state.