It’s that time of year: Citizens Against Government Waste just released its annual “Pig Book,” a compendium and analysis of pork barrel spending, aka earmarks, by the US Congress in 2019.

Summary: Congressional appropriations for 2019 include 282 earmarks, up from 232 last year. The cost comes to $15.3 billion, up from $14.7 billion.

That sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But not nearly as much as one might think, in the scheme of things.

The federal government plans to spend more than $4.5 trillion in 2019. Those earmarks constitute a whopping one third of one percent of that total.

Critics of earmarks point out, correctly, that they’re used by members of Congress to direct federal spending to their own districts, not always with much “public good” justification (cue complaints about $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum, $7.5 million for golf education, etc.)

True, all of it — but it’s baked into any political process. Whether formal earmarks exist or not, politicians will support bills that spend money in their districts, oppose bills that don’t, shill for their favored projects, and make deals to bring home the bacon.

And, it should be mentioned, earmarks do not directly increase total spending. They simply require that if Congress appropriates $10 billion for Purpose X, $1 million of that $10 billion be spent on Project Y.

The problem in that hypothetical isn’t the $1 million earmark, it’s the $10 billion appropriation.

The problem with the real numbers isn’t $15 billion in earmarks, it’s $4.5 trillion in federal spending.

If Congress has $9 million to spend on a fruit fly quarantine program and $3 million to blow on bad loans to ship buyers (among 2019 earmarks), Congress has too much money to spend on, respectively, Agriculture and THUD (Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development).

Congress DOES have too much money — money it takes from all of us via various tax schemes, and money it borrows in our names on the promise to bond-holders that it will beat us out of it, with interest, later.

Earmarks could be part of the answer to that problem.

If Congress specified in greater detail where and how EVERY dollar of EVERY appropriation must be spent, instead of just handing the dough over the executive branch under broad categories, we’d have a much better idea of where it was going — and be better prepared to protest, and bring pressure to bear against, wasteful spending.

It would also clarify “separation of powers” violations, such as President Donald Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional “emergency” misappropriation of  Treasury and Defense Department funds for his pet “border wall” project, making it easier to rein in presidential misbehavior.

Silly earmarks are fun to point out, but concern over them comes at the expense of addressing the bigger problem: The spending is too damn high.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Pork is Not the Problem,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 06/12/19
• “Pork isn’t the problem,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 06/12/19
• “Pork is Not the Problem,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 06/14/19
• “Pork is Not the Problem,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 06/22/19

“We can’t arrest our way out of this. We can’t shelter our way out of this. We have to house our way out of this,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said last year while campaigning for a measure to spend $1.2 billion in taxpayer money over ten years on housing for his city’s homeless population.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who backed a $355 million county sales tax initiative to provide services to the homeless in the county, calls it “the height of contradiction” that homelessness is growing in a prosperous state.

The results? “The stunning increase in homelessness announced in Los Angeles this week — up 16% over last year citywide,” reports CNN, “was an almost incomprehensible conundrum given the nation’s booming economy and the hundreds of millions of dollars that city, county and state officials have directed toward the problem.”

There’s nothing “stunning” or “incomprehensible” about it.

Eric Garcetti, Mark Ridley-Thomas, meet Ronald Reagan: “If you want more of something, subsidize it.”

Los Angeles is already an inherently attractive destination for the homeless for several reasons ranging from climate (homelessness in, say, the midwest can mean freezing to death if you can’t find a shelter bed) to jobs (large metro with lots of employers) to transportation (mass transit for those without cars) to an already larger concentration than rural areas of both private charities and government services aimed at their problems.

What did Ridley-Thomas and Garcetti EXPECT to happen when they announced their plans to stack hundreds of millions of dollars in new government assistance on top of those inherent attractions?

If I was homeless in the western United States, I’d make a beeline for LA. You probably would too.

Garcetti is correct that housing is key to reducing homelessness. But  “free” or subsidized housing attracts people who want to live in it faster than it can be built.

If Garcetti and Ridley-Thomas want to address homelessness with housing, they should get to work reducing tax and regulatory burdens — everything from zoning regulations to permit requirements to rent control ordinances  —  that make it more expensive, difficult, and time-consuming, and less profitable, to build new housing in Los Angeles than it should be.

Unfortunately, however good their intentions, politicians hate giving up any amount of power and control over any activity. LA’s politicians will probably just continue pouring gasoline on the fire and wondering why it gets hotter instead of burning out.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Los Angeles: Homelessness Meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader (Iowa), 06/10/19
• “Los Angeles: Homelessness Meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 06/10/19
• “Los Angeles: Homelessness Meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 06/10/19
• “On homelessness, Los Angeles meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Los Angeles, California Daily News, 06/10/19
• “On homelessness, Los Angeles meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Orange County, California Register, 06/10/19
• “On homelessness, Los Angeles meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Riverside, California Press-Enterprise, 06/10/19
• “On homelessness, Los Angeles meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, San Gabriel Valley, California Tribune, 06/10/19
• “On homelessness, Los Angeles meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, San Bernardino, California Sun, 06/10/19
• “On homelessness, Los Angeles meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Whittier, California Daily News, 06/10/19
• “On homelessness, Los Angeles meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Redondo Beach, California Daily Breeze, 06/10/19
• “Los Angeles: Homelessness meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Montgomery, West Virginia Herald, 06/11/19
• “Los Angeles Homelessness and Econ 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Florence, Alabama Courier Journal [web and print], 06/25/19
• “Los Angeles: Homelessness Meets Economics 101,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Carroll County, Maryland Standard, 07/07/19

Last year, Florida attorney and philanthropist Hugh Culverhouse, Jr. donated $26.5 million to the University of Alabama. The university, grateful for its largest private contribution ever, reciprocated by naming its law school after him. Hugh and UA, sittin’ in a tree …

On June 7, the UA’s board of trustees voted to return his donation (and presumably rename the school). Love-hate relationship, I guess.

Why?  They claim it’s over an argument as to how they spend the money,  but he says they’re lying and the reason he offers is more a lot more believable given the timing.

His discussions with the school over the uses his donation are put to are ongoing. But last week, he said something they didn’t like. Specifically, he publicly urged students to boycott the school in protest of Alabama’s new abortion law.

Agree with him or not — on abortion, on the specific law, or on how students should respond to that law — Hugh Culverhouse, Jr. is a private citizen with a right to say anything he pleases.

Agree with the board of trustees or not on what Hugh Culverhouse, Jr. should say, the University of Alabama is a “public” institution that expects taxpayers nationwide to pick up a substantial portion of its operating costs.

The university’s financial report for 2017-18 notes nearly $45 million in federal grants and contracts and another $213 million in student loans funded by the US Department of Education through the Federal Direct Student Loan Program.

Check your voicemail. Any calls from the board of trustees asking whether it’s OK for them to keep taking your money while refusing Hugh Culverhouse, Jr.’s? I didn’t think so.

If you call up the university and start trying to tell them how to spend your money, or put out a press release urging students to cheer for Tennessee at the next Crimson Tide – Volunteers game, do you think they’ll send you a refund check? Feel free to try it and see what happens, but don’t hold your breath.

If the University of Alabama is so flush that it doesn’t need Hugh Culverhouse, Jr.’s money, they’re getting way too much of yours.

A federally funded university which turns down a private donation over the donor’s constitutionally protected speech should have the full amount of that donation subtracted from its federal funding for the following year.

And by the way, remember to cheer for Tennessee at the next Crimson Tide – Volunteers game.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “If the University of Alabama Doesn’t Need Hugh Culverhouse Jr’s Money, it Doesn’t Need Yours,” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader, (Iowa) 06/07/19
• “If the University of Alabama Doesn’t Need Hugh Culverhouse, Jr.’s Money, it Doesn’t Need Yours,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 06/08/19
• “If the University of Alabama Doesn’t Need Hugh Culverhouse, Jr.’s Money, it Doesn’t Need Yours,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 06/10/19
• “Donor refund shows need for budget cut,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Kenly, North Carolina Johnstonian News, 06/10/19
• “If the University of Alabama Doesn’t Need Hugh Culverhouse, Jr.’s Money, it Doesn’t Need Yours,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 06/14/19