Pork-barrel politics refers to the undertaking of projects that benefit a group of citizens in return for that group’s support or campaign donations. In the USA it is closely linked to the concept of ‘earmarking’: provisions within legislation designed to guarantee the support of a legislator in return for spending on specific projects or organisations that benefit his/her home district. The process of logrolling is often involved: members agreeing to support a bill with another’s earmark in exchange for the same treatment.
There are many examples of seemingly outrageous ‘pork’ being inserted into bills. In 2009, the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, secured $1.2 million of funds from the federal budget to improve the shuttle bus service at Western Kentucky University — just one of 60 earmarks in the bill that together cost $113 million. In 2015 the Aid Bill agreed to assist with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy (which hit the east coast of the USA) included the provision of pork, such as $150 million for fisheries in Alaska and $821 million for harbour dredging to benefit Mississippi River towns like St Louis. But the most infamous earmark prize undoubtedly goes to Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’ ‘Bridge to Nowhere’: $223 million directed to the building of a bridge from the remote town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) to the island of Gravina (population 50).
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