On the Campaign Trail with Ed Tibbetts

We in the Quad-Cities know about Jim Nussle’s success at getting congressional earmarks.

Our former congressman got $50 million for the I-74 bridge. He’s pursued money for the Rock Island Arsenal And, up in Dubuque, he helped with a big bridge project there. There are other examples, of course.

Now that record is being thrown in his face.

Nussle, who represented the Iowa Quad-Cities for five years, was picked to be the White House’s new budget chief this week. And, according to a New York Times article today, Democrats are poring over his 16 years in office looking for pork-barrel spending that might push back against a White House playing hardball on the spending habits of congressional Democrats.

(Read the article here).

Nussle, the former House budget chair, will have to knock heads with Congress over spending, so the more that people know about his pursuit of earmarks while he was a legislator, the harder it will be for the White House to tilt against them when they come out of Congress.

Of course, earmarks aren’t really the biggest problem with government spending (they make up a relatively small part of the pie) but they are an easily targeted slice because often they include ridiculous projects, especially if viewed from a distance. 

Nussle always liked to say that, as House budget chief, he was the guy who set the fence lines (conservatively) but that within those lines he’d work like crazy to help the home folks.

I don’t know if that kind of nuance will work with those who think earmarks are the most obvious example of government spending gone amok. But I suspect that most legislators realize that it’s a rare bird willing to tell their visiting chambers of commerce that, ’Gee, I’d like to help you folks at home with that project — and I know it’s really needed — but earmarks contribute to our growing federal deficit and I’m just not going to play that game.’

Jim Leach did it. Jeff Flake, the Arizona congressman, gets that kind of credit, too. But there aren’t too many others.

Of course, it’ll also be a whole lot easier for a legislator to ignore complaints about earmarks when the complainer used to be in there dollar diving with the rest of them. Perhaps that means they will concentrate elsewhere. You know, where the money really is.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 9:09 am and is filed under On The Campaign Trail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.