Do government wa$te watchdog groups have a sense of proportion?

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | America's most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, is miffed. Citizens Against Government Waste recently named him "porker of the month." Phil shared the label with his congressman, Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa. Peterson's sin was defending a $100,000 federal grant to help the Punxsutawney Weather Discovery Center, in Punxsutawney, Pa.

Both Phil and his rep have reason to complain. Of course, the watchdog group may ask why taxpayers should support a weather museum in Pennsylvania. And it has cited other pork projects: $500,000 for a soccer and Nordic ski center in Alaska; $75,000 for the paper-industry hall of fame in Wisconsin; $35,000 for the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

But what's missing here is "proportion." While we shine bright lights on the little piglets, the massive hogs oink right through.

We speak of the U.S. farm-subsidy program, which cost taxpayers $16 billion last year. This is quite a lot of government aid — especially since farm income had doubled over the preceding two years. That $16 billion could have funded 160,000 Punxsutawney weather centers.

In fairness to Citizens Against Government Waste, the group defines pork in a somewhat narrow way: as items that are inserted into a bill without hearings. And it does flog the farm-subsidy program.

But its obsessive harping on these penny-ante projects — though often funny — does a disservice. It whips up public anger at lawmakers trying to draw some economic-development money into their districts, while giving the big rip-off artists a free pass.

In Alabama, for example, 23 agribusinesses each received government checks for over $500,000 in 2003 — three of them for over $1 million. Yet Citizens Against Government Waste gives Alabama's congressional delegation generally fine ratings.

One Alabama senator, Republican Jeff Sessions, ranks way up there as a "taxpayer hero." Republican Sen. Richard Shelby gets a "lukewarm" rating, middling but far from the bottom. Five of Alabama's seven congressmen score as "friendly" to taxpayers or higher.

Look at Alaska. The Last Frontier ranks number one in pork per resident, according to the watchdog group. One of its senators, Republican Ted Stevens, presided over the infamous 2004 omnibus spending bill, which showered the state with nearly half a billion dollars' worth of goodies.

But the watchdogs give Stevens a "lukewarm," almost "friendly" rating. And Alaska's one congressman, Republican Don Young, stands just four points shy of "taxypayer hero."

New Jersey gets less pork per capita than any other state, but the watchdogs still find enormous fault with its Washington delegation. Sen. John Corzine, a Democrat, is rated "hostile" to taxpayers, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, also a Democrat, is labeled "unfriendly." Of New Jersey's 13 congressmen, seven are deemed "hostile" and four are "lukewarm."

Something here is screwy. It's hard to believe that New Jersey loves pork so much that it happily sends the money to Alaska and Alabama. Again, it depends on what you call pork.

Farm subsidies are especially outrageous. Little of the money ends up with the struggling farmers the program was meant to help. Nearly half goes to operations with sales of $250,000 or more. Beneficiaries include Ted Turner and Georgia Pacific.

Furthermore, the program benefits growers of only a few select crops: corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. There are no subsidies for 400 other crops. That's why only 9 percent of farms in California — America's vegetable capital — get government subsidies, while 78 percent of North Dakota farms do.

The campaign to divert attention to the little guys has been so effective that we see local pundits denouncing their own meager scraps. For example, a columnist in Pittsburgh angrily listed the modest bacon bits coming to Pennsylvania: $100,000 for the weather museum, $121,750 for a Philadelphia ballet school, $300,000 for a Bucknell University theater rehab and $472,000 for Penn State to study dairy farming.

The columnist characterized this spending as "looting" the taxpayers and a "spree without limits." But together, they don't even total $1 million. In 2003, meanwhile, taxpayers mailed a $3 million check to a single farmer in Texas.

Defenders of the farm-subsidy program argue that it helps struggling agricultural communities. But that was the point of building a weather museum in a depressed part of western Pennsylvania.

The watchdogs and the groundhogs clearly need to talk.

Froma Harrop is a columnist for The Providence Journal. Comment by clicking here.