\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRoll them logs!
\n\u201cI don\u2019t expect it to be a partisan effort. Now that doesn\u2019t mean that everybody does participate,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I know there are a lot of Republicans on our side and a lot of Republicans on the Senate side who want to \u2026 have the ability to invest in their states.\u201d
I guess the ellipsis shows that the quote was edited, but I\u2019d like to think he paused a second to think of a euphemism.\u00a0
Big (and good) if true!
what\u2019s the nuanced version of the pro pork barrel position
I get that\u00a0\u201cthis is how the sausage is made\u201d and\u00a0\u201cthe sausage is very tasty, and must be made\u201d is the basic idea, but there\u2019s a version of this running on a more concrete argument, right
Well, specifically that without earmarks, individual members have nothing to negotiate about on other than ideological grounds - with no chips for trading, the budget process goes from positive-sum to zero-sum and is much more likely to grind to a halt.
(Furthermore, especially given that we\u2019re in a recession, increased spending on random infrastructure projects etc. seems like a positive externality to me.)
Basically, Tea Party style universal obstructionism is a lot harder when you can\u2019t buy people off (\u201cbuy them off\u201d with material benefits to the people in their district, that is, which to reiterate is a positive good in and of itself). Now, this is not the most efficient way to allocate government spending, but it\u2019s better than not spending at all. And nobody benefits when there are government shutdowns and stuff constantly.
right, that\u2019s the sausage making argument. I get the idea of the argument, it\u2019s just not at all clear that it\u2019s true.
naively pork barrel is clearly bad, and the glib\u00a0\u201cpork barrel good\u201d take seems mostly like an appeal to contrarianism or elitism.
however, recognizing that I am not the target demographic of the op, I\u2019d rather put that aside. if pork barrel really is\u00a0good, I\u2019d like to come to that conclusion. hence the desire to interact with a fuller, more concrete argument!
has the budget process gone from positive sum to zero sum?
do ideological and policy commitments alone offer no grounds for negotiations?
is an inability to buy people off the\u00a0\u201creal\u201d reason negotiations are failing?
if a policy is bad enough that you can\u2019t pass it without bribery, wouldn\u2019t wasting extra money on bribery make it worse rather than better?
\nif a policy is bad enough that you can\u2019t pass it without bribery
This is completely failing to engage with my argument.\u00a0 Republicans do not care whether the policy is good or not.\u00a0 If it might benefit a Democratic President, they\u2019re agin\u2019 it.
(And yes, this is asymmetric, as the CARES Act makes extremely obvious.)
right, so this is one of the assertions. I\u2019m hoping to get a feel for, on the object level, if this is true.
for this particular assertion, the convincing evidence I would hope for would likely be some combination of cases where congressmen voted against proposals that were, from their ideological and material perspective good policy for reasons of political affiliation, as well some broad trends that back up the idea that this is happening more, and pivoted around the end of earmarking.
(I\u2019m sure there\u2019s a better word, but it slipped my mind - here I don\u2019t mean ideology as in\u00a0\u201chates obama\u201d or something, but as in a conceptual framework of good policy. I would we would agree that congress should not pass policies they think harm America for local political benefit.)
in general, what I am fishing for, is a resource explaining in detail to me, a not terribly well educated individual who is against wasteful government spending, why something as obviously distasteful as pork barrel is really actually worth it.
(I searched\u00a0\u201cmatt yglesias pork barrel good\u201d in hope of securing that neoliberal wisdom and sure enough I got something, but not at the level of detail I was hoping for.)
they aren\u2019t treating \u201cthe spending\u201d and \u201cthe mechanism by which the spending is allocated\u201d when they evaluate its return as a positive good (correctly)