Porker of the Month

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is a non-partisan, non-profit, private organization that represents more than one million organization members and supporters around the country. The group’s core mission is to eliminate mismanagement, waste, and inefficiency by politicians in the federal government. The industrialist J. Peter Grace and journalist Jack Anderson founded the organization in 1984. Because of the increasing frustration of taxpayers tired of politicians squandering their hard-earned money, the membership of CAG@ has exploded from only 5,000 members in 1988 to more than one million people today.

One of the group’s most endearing and popular regular features is the "Porker of the Month" award they assign to legislators, government officials, and candidates for political office who have blatantly disregarded the interests of taxpayers. Recipients of the Porker of the Month award are selected based on their arrogance and their propensity for willfully neglecting the wishes and opinions of taxpayers in spending their money.

The most recent winners of this dubious award include Kansas Representative Lynn Jenkins, California Representative Duncan Hunter, and New Jersey Representative Leonard Lance. These three Congressmen broke the campaign pledges they made for reforming budgetary earmarks. CAGW President Tom Shatz said that although members of Congress betray the trust of taxpayers each year by overloading the budget with earmarks, the betrayals by these three legislators is particularly egregious because they had signed pledges to do the opposite just a few months before being sworn into Congress.

The signed pledges specifically stated that the Congressmen would not "request any earmarked funding or targeted tax benefit that does not serve a federal interest and/or have a federal nexus." Although, the pledge is very straightforward and virtually impossible to misunderstand, these three apparently had mental lapses when they requested multiple earmarks in the appropriations bills for 2010 - earmarks that were clearly in violation of their pledges.

Rep. Hunter asked for $2 million for a pedestrian bridge in San Diego, saying that completing the bridge would conclude a project that has been in progress for more than 10 years and has been supported by elected officials and the local community. Rep. Jenkins asked for $2 million to reconstruct Kasold Drive in Lawrence, Kansas. Rep. Lance requested nearly a million dollars to upgrade downtown street lighting in Cranford township as well as $350,000 for a bike and hike path in Bedminster Township. And these are just a few of the pork-atrocities these legislators have committed.

By breaking their word, Shatz says, these three politicians have joined up with the "politics as usual" club by wooing voters through posing as fiscal conservatives while they’re campaigning, but then spending money like traditional Washington insiders after voters have believed them and elected them. Copies of the pledges the politicians signed are available to all members of the media, and they are listed on their websites as required by earmark reforms that were passed recently.