Re: educate a liberal
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I'm not sure I understand. Are you worried about who specifically decides what's pork and what's not?
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Not the partisanship, but specific requirements. For example, do they vote on it? How wasteful does a law need to be before they deem it pork?
Upon further reflection, a nonpartisan agreement on these definitions that is satisfactory to all is unrealistic.
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By their account, pork expenditures totalled between $10 billion and $27 billion every year from 1995-2005, or roughly 1% of the total budget. I doubt either party is this responsible.
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Check their numbers if you have doubts. Your cynicism (this isn't a knock or anything) may be getting the better of you.
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If 1% of congressional spending is "pork", then 99% of congressional spending is "fiscally responsible". This has numerous absurd implications, such as the current tax schedule being "reasonable". Of course it depends on the definitions of "pork", "fiscally responsible", "reasonable", if the first two are mutually exculsive, etc.
So what I'm really looking for is a nonpartisan summary of all bills passed by Congress. I would use the actual bills or summaries, but the bills are in lawyerese and the summaries provided by Congress are insufficient. Where can I find such a resource?
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