Chip Taylor

One man's pork...

... is another man's vitally needed infrastructure. In the past, Republicans have suggested -- correctly in my opinion -- that environmental legislation should be subjected to cost-benefit analysis. Not so, other legislation.

At the Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby explains that Kit Bond (R-Missouri) has no use for CBA if it stands in the way of highly desirable pork:

Bond is now pushing a project that would hoist him up the porksters' rankings. It's much better than any of the 176 Missouri earmarks that he inserted into the omnibus spending bill earlier this year: earmarks that set aside $500,000 for the Friends of RB Stockton Lake Community Project, $400,000 for an elevated water storage tank and so on. This time, folks, he's swinging for the stands. He wants $1.7 billion of your money.

Bond wants this cash to vamp up the Mississippi waterway that connects the grain and corn of the Midwest to the export hub of New Orleans. The barges that navigate this route have to pass through a series of locks, and the locks aren't long enough for Bond's liking. Longer locks would mean less congestion, lower shipping rates and savings for Missouri's farmers. Their construction would also generate 48 million hours of work for carpenters, according to Bond's office.

Would the reduced congestion justify the $1.7 billion that Bond would like to spend? Funny you should ask. This issue has been studied and studied for more than a decade, and there's no way the numbers work. The fact that Bond still champions this project shows how senior senators don't feel obliged to put the national interest first. If something is good for their state, they are capable of anything.

A cost-benefit analysis of Bond's scheme was first commissioned 11 years ago by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which would implement it. The study concluded that lock expansion could not be justified since rather cheap innovations -- congestion charges, for example -- could reduce delays more simply. Besides, the idea that river congestion constituted a significant burden on farm exporters seemed a stretch. Even assuming a sharp increase in river traffic, congestion was projected to add just a few percent to the cost of a barge trip to New Orleans. The final price of American corn in an export market such as Japan would be up a fraction of 1 percent.

The Army Corps, which likes to please nice senators such as Bond, got rid of the author of that study. Soon a new and suitably supportive analysis appeared, but the National Academy of Sciences reviewed its methodology and pointed out that it was bogus. The Corps said sorry and produced yet a third study; again the National Academy declared that its calculations were dishonest. No matter how hard the Army Corps tried, in other words, there was no way to come up with credible projections that justified blowing vast sums on Bond's beloved waterway.

Mallaby says the authorizing legislation is gathering support.