by Winslow T. Wheeler
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Will make you both nauseus and hopping mad, 2008-01-10
Drawing from personal experience gained from over thirty years working as a Congressional staffer on Capitol Hill, Winslow Wheeler provides an irritatingly glaring look at how legislation is co-opted via the insertion of substantial amounts of "pork" (wasteful spending). He cites example after example, with great attention to sordid details, of how the legislative process has been corrupted by egomaniacal representatives and senators seeking to ensure nothing more than their own reelection. The names of the not-so-innocent are most definitely not protected, and specific actions are detailed finely.
Using its power of the purse, Congress often foregoes its constitutional responsibility to provide for the common good and instead provides for their own good and the good of those with whom they seek to curry favor. Through the insertion of thousands of very specific budget line items--items that would rarely survive a floor vote on their own merits--into larger pieces of legislation, representatives and senators grab a share of taxpayer funds for their home state constituents. This provides them with fodder for press releases, trumpeting to the masses back home how hard their elected representative is working for them.
Wheeler takes particular umbrage at the Congress's pursuit of pork to the great detriment of our national defense. To wit, he details the many gimmicks and budgetary tricks used blatantly to obscure the real costs of non-requested projects inserted into Department of Defense (DoD) funding bills. Often, the funding for these projects are offset by reducing the military's operations and maintenance (O&M) budget--the very budget that provides for military readiness and ongoing war operations.
There are five essentials of what Wheeler terms the "defense pork system". First, is the extreme control of the system by DoD employees, with little modification by the Congress. Little pork gets added to the defense budget without the tacit approval of key players in the Department of Defense. Having failed to gain approval of a pet project through the executive branch budget process, DoD personnel work through the back door of Congress to get these projects inserted in the final legislation. Second, this process works to make most players happy--DoD gets projects it wants (or at least, can tolerate); members of Congress get funds for projects in their home state or district; lobbyists make a nice fee for getting the language included in the bill; etc. etc.
Third, Wheeler points out that this entire system undermines military effectiveness via the offsetting reductions in the O&M accounts to make room for the pork. Who gets left holding the bag? The American citizen, and the troops who are either already deployed or are in training, are the ones given short shrift in this system. Fourth, this system operates well because there are people who want it to continue, and it is subject to very little oversight. He cites the commonplace circumvention of budgetary statutes, and oftentimes the outright ignoring of required checks and balances.
Finally, he points out that the problem is getting worse, and that the preoccupation with pork is slowly eroding our national security. One need look no further than the morning newspaper to confirm that Wheeler is correct: in the recently passed omnibus appropriations bill, over 8900 home-district and home-state pet projects were included in the bill, and budgetary legerdemain allowed such items as veterans' care, nutrition assistance, and security for political conventions to be reclassified as "emergencies", so that they would not be counted in the total for normal operations.
Other egregious examples of mendacity include:
-How decreases in budgets are really increases, and vice versa;
-Non-emergency emergency spending;
-Congress's desire to be friends of DoD, and the back-scratching relationship that this fosters;
-Reclassification of procurements as leases, thus reducing the current year cost of projects;
-How Congressional hearings are mostly a sham, and how things not said during a hearing get included in the transcript of the hearing
-How members of Congress rail openly against pork, but work tirelessly to bring federal funds back to their home districts...and then shamelessly issue press releases documenting their successes.
So, is there a solution to the problem? Wheeler notes sarcastically that there "exist members (of Congress) who demonstrate occasional spasms of character". He calls these members "mixed breeds", as while they illuminate wasteful spending and work to stop the most excessive examples, they also are not shy about bringing home the bacon to their home constituents...all within reason, of course. As Wheeler puts it, "even among the worst on Capitol Hill, surely there are many who do not kick their dogs every single day".
Surely.
If reform is to be accomplished, it probably lies with these mixed breeds to start the reformation process, and a twelve step program is proscribed. His steps progress from admitting the problem and taking decisive action utilizing existing House and Senate rules, to changing the format of C-Span, reducing Congressional staffs, eliminating federally paid campaign workers, and greatly reducing the power of lobbyists. All are noteworthy goals, but the likelihood of this or any other Congress to implement most--or even any--of these steps would seem unlikely at best.
This book at times is difficult to continue reading, as the instances of political pandering and self-serving aggrandizement--all at the expense of the common taxpayer--leaves one somewhere between nauseous and madder than hell. As a person who was once a party to the very deception and one-upmanship portrayed throughout the book, Wheeler exposes the manner in which Congress and executive branch agencies fleece the taxpayer, doing more harm than good for U.S. national security--all while spinning a story of righteous toil for the good of the nation.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
 Worth the Price of Admission, 2005-05-10
After reading and enjoying the first half of this book, I signed on to read the reviews here. I have come to believe it is a good measure of a book to look at the seriousness of the negative reviews. The one negative review here, so far, is not credible. To criticize a substative critique of our governmental procedures because it is not entertaining, seems shallow. To call a work polemic, is not to say it is untrue.
I highly recommend this work. I will not think the same of the way our congress works or doesn't work because of Mr. Wheeler's insights. His criticisms are bi-partison and concern the procedures of our government.
The section of the book contrasting the development of the War Powers Act to the recent senate approval of the Iraqi war, is worth the price of the entire book.
Much of the book discusses "Pork" issues in the Senate and specifically in defense bills. But the real issue is how such issues corrupt the entire process. To dismiss this issue because the dollar amount spent on "pork" is small in relationship to the entire federal budget, is to overlook the corrosive effect of this matter. This book highlights how prevasive it is in the lives of our members of congress. And that is a fact that is not in the interests of anyone reading this review.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
An overall analysis of Congressional failures, 2005-03-07
How does Congress sabotage U.S. security? Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages U.S. Security is no sensationalist title: it's written by a veteran National Security Advisor to four senators and backed by years of political insider interactions. His is a damning expose arguing that since 9/11, Congress has endangered the nation's security by diverting money from war-fighting accounts to pay for state interests. Meticulous documentation of such actions makes this a winning title not limited to one party or philosophy, but to an overall analysis of Congressional failures.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
Helpful Reading, More Opinion than Research, 2005-02-12
Edit of 10 Oct 08 to add comment pointing to author's really excellent and detailed summary of what is wrong with Pentagon today (including budget data), and more links.
Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.
What the author does in this book is focus on the failings of Congress. What the author does not do is provide a more documented analysis of why and how Congress has become disconnected from the people it is supposed to represent, or why the Executive does not balance Congress when the latter abuse their powers. The "balance of power" is in fact a "balance of pork privileges," and it is this inability, as the author describes it, to focus on all the facts, in an objective way, in order to make the best application of the taxpayer dollar, that cripples Congress (and the Executive).
I've given the author four stars because I disagree with those who would demean his motives. What I read here is consistent with the other books I have read--and my own experience talking to generally witless under-educated staff (because I am not important enough to get to the few who are "top notch"). When the author open his book by pointing out that ***all*** watchdog or balancing elements--the media, the think tanks--have failed to hold Congress accountable, I must agree with him.
The most interesting "thread" within the book has to do with information--what information gets where, who sees it, what do they do with it. At the end, the author concludes, most Members are not doing their homework, and most staffs are too busy focused on inserting partisan advantage and localized pork to actually serve the people of the United States in an effective manner.
The book is unusual in being focused on national security and defense, where the author spent his entire career, and what jumped out at me is that Congress has no grand strategy--Congress, like the Executive, is fragmented into stovepipes and is not able to make thoughtful trade-offs at the big picture level between Diplomacy Information Military Economic (DIME) instruments of national power.
The author is severely critical, and rightly so, I believe, in lambasting the Members for abdicating their Constitutional power to declare war. On page 221 he says that it is clear that Members consider their re-election prospects more important than the need to stand tall and oppose a war they do not support.
The author ends by proposing 12 steps for Congressional reform, among the most important of which is exposure of the truth to the public: no more Congressional Record "revisions," no more secret back-room meetings, no more fake camera shots showing Senators speaking to an empty room; no more lightweight partisan staff shuttling to jobs in the Executive they are supposed to help oversee; no more stone-walling of the press; and no more lobbyists with direct access--only constituents. These are all common sense suggestions that are helpful to the public interest.
The author's last two sentences of the book are most helpful of all: "There is really only one thing that will force members of Congress to perform as best as they are able. That is for the public to have the information to distinguish the good from the bad and the phonies from the sincere."
Public information in the public interest...this is the key.
See also, published since then:
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
New Links 10 Oct 08:
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
 Poorly written polemic, 2005-02-06
Let me first tell you what I was looking for, and then what this book is all about.
I was looking for something a bit more scholarly, though the title should have tipped me off that this was more of a polemical book along the lines of Bovard's "Farm Fiasco". Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Now about the book: it is written poorly, the prose is wooden. Quite tedious to read because it is written in a polemic but not in an entertaining way. Kind of like the reviews on Amazon that give it five stars. If you dislike that "Soviet style" retoric, then this book is heavy slogging.
As to specifics: mostly anectodal evidence is given of 'pork', but nothing concrete. Adding the numbers, and if you've read Bovard's (a much better writer) expose, you will know that pork is between $1 billion to (at most) $100 billion. Nothing to write home about when the Federal budget is $2500 billion.
Slightly more interesting than the travails of a 50 year old Congressional staffer who apparently knew he was due to retire and started ghost writing under the name "Sparticus" (and the wrinkles of how he got fired are told in this book), is stuff that only a real Washington insider might appreciate: how, for example, the GAO is, despite their popular image as a watchdog, considered by Beltway insiders as incompetent and superficial. Also you can read between the lines and see which Senators are bombastic (Stevens, Domenici) and which the author admires (Jarvis, Kassebaum, and sometimes, in a backhand way, McCain).
A much, much better book about how government operates when it comes to pork is anything by James Bovard (if you like over-the-top bombast mixed with much more fact than this book), or, if you like humor, try "Parliament of Whores" by P. J. O'Rourke, which is actually pretty good in explaning things, besides being funny.
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