The King of Pork
From John Fund at the Wall Street Journal ($):
The Republican Party needs to be careful lest it be defined by its most senior legislators. Take Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who has spent 38 years raiding the federal treasury on behalf of his state.
This week Mr. Stevens will become the longest-serving Republican senator in history, having first been appointed to fill a vacancy created by the death of a Democratic senator on Christmas Eve 1968. Mr. Stevens has now served longer than even the late South Carolina Republican Strom Thurmond. He also has in common with another of the Senate's long-servers, West Virginia's Robert Byrd, his single-minded drive to ensure his home state's status as the No. 1 state for pork. In 2005, Alaska hauled in $984.85 worth of pork for every resident.
Nor is Mr. Stevens shy in his efforts to keep the wraps on just where that pork is going. Last year, GOP Senator Tom Coburn and Democratic Senator Barack Obama introduced the Federal Transparency Act. The goal was to create a public Internet database that would allow Google-like searches of the $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts and loans. The "shame factor" the bill was meant to heighten was urgently needed given that earmarks had grown tenfold between 1990 and 2005.
But as modest as the bill was, Mr. Stevens, a chief defender of the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," put a hold on it, using the tradition allowing any senator to secretly block consideration of a proposed law. Only after a barrage of negative publicity did he finally release his hold. The bill quickly passed into law.
Yet Sen. Stevens continues to defend the earmark process, claiming "discretionary federal spending isn't out of whack." He admits a lot of the earmarks now being handed out wouldn't have passed constitutional muster before the Great Society, but no one is more tenacious in seeing that his state now gets its maximum share. Humoring him has cost Republicans credibility. He has become an icon of earmark excess, starting with the fact that he's given his name to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.
Earmarks also appear to be a family business. Bill Bittner, his brother-in-law, is a D.C. lobbyist who has hauled in dozens of earmarks for his clients. Senator Stevens's son, Ben, was until last December the majority leader of the Alaska Senate, and while in office collected large consulting fees from companies that benefited from some of dad's earmarks.
His son's political career came to a crashing end last year when he chose to retire just before federal agents raided his state offices along with those of a half-dozen other Alaska legislators. The feds were -- and still are -- investigating ties between them and an oil-services company. Some of the legislators involved even referred to themselves as "the Corrupt Bastards Club." Alaska officials admit the perception of favoritism in local contracts and federal earmarks is embarrassing the state.
But that's nothing compared to the embarrassment Mr. Stevens has created for his Republican Party. Despite an overall voting record that can be characterized as "conservative," Mr. Stevens helped to seriously damage the Republican name brand as a party of limited government and lower spending. When GOP Senators gather later this month to toast Mr. Stevens's nearly four decades of service, they might reflect upon how high a price they've paid for handing him so much power over the years.
