More pork on Nevada’s plate

By Lisa Mascaro

Monday, Nov. 27, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.

WASHINGTON - When it comes to drawing tax dollars from Washington back to Nevada, Sen. Harry Reid's gain is the Silver State's pork.

Six years ago, Nevada ranked 17th nationwide in the pork procurement game, with the state's lawmakers bringing home $76 million in special earmarked projects.

By this year, Nevada had doubled its take, jumping to No. 8 with $166 million, thanks in large part to Reid's rise to Senate minority leader.

By one measure, Reid has steered more than $475 million to Nevada since 2000.

With Reid moving into his new, more potent position as Senate majority leader in the next Congress by virtue of the Democrats' success in the Nov. 7 election, the state's ranking has nowhere to go but up.

That, however, is no longer an unmitigated political advantage.

Although bringing tax dollars back from Washington to their home states has long been one of the key indicators of senators' and representatives' effectiveness, doing so got a bad rap after corruption scandals haunted Congress this year.

The controversies - which included former Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham trading earmarks for bribes and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff reportedly referring to a key Capitol Hill committee as the "favor factory" - led in part to the thumping Republicans took in the midterm elections.

Even honest earmarks got attacked for their audacity, as in the case of Alaska lawmakers securing a $220 million-plus "bridge to nowhere."

Democrats have vowed to clean up Washington in the first 100 hours of Congress with ethics changes. One anticipated change would foster more transparency in "earmarks," special funding slipped at the last minute into bills for projects in lawmakers' states or home districts, often without the sponsor's name attached.

But whether requiring members of Congress to put their name on earmarks will slow special spending is doubtful, experts said.

The number of earmarks has increased tenfold in the past decade to nearly 10,000, and the value has more than doubled to $29 billion, according to the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste.

What started as a Republican strategy to help lawmakers in tight re-election battles after they took control of the House in 1994 has become a way of life in Washington, a chance for legislators to fund a project back home and send out a press release touting the good deed.

In that regard, Reid has been as skilled as some of the Senate's legendary leaders, and isn't planning to give it up soon. He earned the watchdog group's "porker of the month" honor in 2005 for channeling one-fifth of the national renewable energy laboratory's budget to home-state projects.

Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, which publishes the state rankings in its annual "Pig Book," said he would not be surprised if Nevada broke into the top five spot in coming years.

"If you look at the top porkers, they're the leaders," he said. "The example they set is, 'Get what you can and do what I do.' "

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the senator "makes no apologies for delivering for Nevada."

"This is a process that's been in place a long time," Summers said. "It's what allows him to get things done for the state."

The Nevada delegation stands proudly behind its pork. Members have worked to bring home funding for interchanges on the Beltway, improvements to the control tower at McCarran International Airport, the widening of State Route 160 between Pahrump and Las Vegas, and $500,000 for renovating the historic 1933 Post Office in Las Vegas.

Earmarks, they say, are a way to bring money to the fast-growing state when the federal budget process doesn't. Noting that Nevada taxpayers send more to Washington than they get in return, they say this is one way to even out the difference .

The problem, Nevada's lawmakers say, is not earmarks per se, but when earmarks are hidden in bills or traded for favors as in the pay-to-play corruption cases.

Reid, along with Republican Sen. John Ensign and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley and Republican Rep. Jon Porter, all favor greater transparency in the process with lawmakers being forced to put their names on their earmarks.

"It's gotten out of control, there's no question about that," Ensign spokesman Jack Finn said. "Any senator who makes a request should be willing to stand up on the floor and in full view make that public."

Berkley said that attaching names to earmarks is her "starting point" for ethics reform.

Such a requirement would not bother her in the least, Berkley said.

"Not only do I not want to hide the fact that I requested and received funding, I want people to know about that," Berkley said. "I want to trumpet these dollars."

But putting a name on an earmark is a mild change compared to stricter proposals that call for reducing the total amount spent on earmarks or banning family members and former-staffers-turned-lobbyists from requesting them of Congress.

At the height of this year's corruption scandals, dozens of proposed reforms were floating around Congress, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation. None passed.

The way to curtail earmark abuse, Schatz argues, is to give Congress limits. "They'll take what they can get," he said.

And Democrats have their work cut out for them. Already, according to the Heritage Foundation, proposed 2007 spending bills have 12,000 earmarks tucked inside.