According to CNN, the terms pork-barrel bill refers to "a longstanding Washington practice where lawmakers slip favored projects into various spending bills". That's a quaint little name for a terrible practice.
This came to my attention recently when I read that there would be additions to the omnibus bill that's going through congress that could make it illegal to manufacture a device that skips ads, whether they're at the beginning of DVD's, or while you're watching a pre-recorded TV show. This isn't really pork-barreling, but in looking at the omnibus bill online, I found a few quotes from John McCain, bashing the omnibus bill and those lawmakers who were using it to attach these pork-barrel projects for the people in their districts.
Here are a few of the comments he made (full press release at senate.mccain.gov).
It appears that the big spenders in Washington have all but stolen the credit card numbers of every hard-working taxpayer in America and gone on a limitless spending spree for parochial, pork-barrel projects, leaving the taxpayers to pay and pay. These big spenders view the federal budget as a virtual shopping mall where they can buy their way to re-election ... Mr. President, there is over $11 billion in unrequested, unauthorized, run-of-the-mill pork projects contained in the 1,182 pages of this conference report. Lets go through some of the more interesting provisions:
$7.3 million for Hawaiian Sea Turtles.
$6 million for Sea Lions in Alaska.
$1 million for Mormon cricket suppression in Utah.
$325,000 to the City of Salinas, California, for construction of a swimming pool.
...
In fact, I strongly suggest that we change the name of this bill to "The Incumbent Protection Act of 2004".
I strongly agree with Senator McCain. I think attaching legislation to appropriation bills (that are "must pass" bills) is despicable. It takes advantage of the system we have in place to form the laws we live by here in the US. I will add that I think that anyone who abuses the system we have in place for approving laws should be removed from power. It's as simple as that.
It's a tricky situation though. Since the congressmen are passing legislation to award money to their constituents, those constituents are not likely to vote against their congressman when reelection time comes around. To me, this indicates that it is important to set up other penalties for those congressmen who continue to add extra legislation to these appropriation bills, that are essentially "must pass" bills. Do not fine them, do not censure them, remove them from the position they hold that allows them the opportunity to abuse the US legislative system.
I'm glad there are senators like John McCain who are standing up for ethical practices in congress. I hope President Bush takes note of the stand certain senators are taking, and will begin to veto certain bills, and push those people in his party to practice ethical legislative practices. Democrats are guilty of the practice also, and should work to avoid practices like pork-barreling.
Additional Articles concerning Pork-Barrel bills:
http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/gen/resources/pork/
http://www.rppi.org/porkbarrel.shtml