Chip Taylor

Would they really reconsider the highway bill?

Some in GOP Regretting Pork-Stuffed Highway Bill

By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 5, 2005; Page A01

The highway bill seemed like such a good idea when it sailed through Congress this summer. But now Republicans who assembled the record spending package are suffering buyer's remorse.

The $286 billion legislation was stuffed with 6,000 pet projects for lawmakers' districts, including what critics denounce as a $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" that would replace a 7-minute ferry ride in a sparsely populated area of Alaska. Usually members of Congress cannot wait to rush home and brag about such bounty -- a staggering number of parking lots, bus depots, bike paths and new interchanges for just about every congressional district in the country that added $24 billion to the overall cost of maintaining the nation's highways and bridges in the coming years.

But with spiraling war and hurricane recovery costs, the pork-laden bill has become a political albatross for Republicans, who have been promising since President Bush took office to get rid of wasteful spending.

Good. It should be a political albatross. Does that mean that they can/will have a do over? Maybe.

...

Conservative groups, government watchdogs and ordinary folks around the country are so offended by the size of the legislation -- signed into law by Bush in early August -- that efforts are underway in the House and the Senate to rescind or reallocate a portion of its funds.

...

McCain and six other Senate Republicans want to reallocate the pork dollars in the bill to help pay for the damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of eight House members who opposed the legislation, and who declined any special projects for his district, wants to rescind 10 percent of the bill's total cost and allow states to disregard the pet projects authorized by the legislation, and spend the money as they wish.

"My guess is that most states would gladly forgo 10 percent of their funding for the ability to make funding decisions," Flake said.

The Senate has already considered one proposal to scale back the legislation -- an amendment offered by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to cut funding for some of the projects special-ordered by Alaskan lawmakers and use the money saved to rebuild the Interstate 10 bridge over Lake Pontchartrain outside New Orleans. The I-10 bridge, a major transportation corridor, was shattered during the Katrina storm surge.

Why might the new proposal pass when the Coburn amendment was so soundly defeated?

Here's what was wrong with the Coburn amendment.

In a legislature operating under pure majority rule, theory predicts that outcomes will be unstable. Members of the losing coalition would frequently have an incentive to reopen settled issues in order to fashion a new majority in which they could be on the winning side. Of course, this creates a new minority coalition with the incentive to reopen the issue again. Nothing would ever be settled. The legislature could use up all of its time rehashing old issues.

Although American legislatures operate largely according to majority rule, we really don't see the sort of instability predicted above. Why not? One theory is that of structurally induced equilibrium. That is, legislatures arrange their organizational structure and procedures to prevent endless vote cycling and impose stability.

One such procedure might be to have a norm that legislation isn't reopened until its current authorization ends. Highway bills are normally authorized for several years. Legislators bargain until they reach a deal that will pass muster in both chambers and with the president and then they are done until the next reauthorization. There is no reopening. To do otherwise would be to risk the possibility of endless vote cycling in a legislative war of all against all.

I think that is one reason why there was so little support for the Coburn amendment. Even those who might have shared his overriding objective may have been reluctant to participate in such a violation of congressional norms.

Would something like the Flake proposal be more likely to pass?

Maybe. Where Coburn wanted to take from one state and give to another, the Flake proposal would affect every state equally. So it doesn't seem so much like a case of building a new winning coalition to defeat the old one. Still, it is a reopener and a violation of the norm. So I don't know.

Another thing. Representatives and senators alike put pork (or earmarked projects) in the bill for a reason. They reward members of their electoral coalition and get specific credit-claiming opportunities. Block grant programs, which is what Flake proposes transforming the highway bill into, don't provide the same opportunities. I'd be surprised to see Congress give it up.

And yet another thing. If there was no finality to a legislative bargain, legislators would have a tough time getting the beneficiaries of legislation to pay for it.