Why I Miss Pork-Barrel Politics

It feels like a lifetime ago, but within the past decade one of the main problems hovering over the U.S. Congress was corruption. Sometimes it was gross corruption like when the FBI found almost $100,000 in bribes stashed in the freezer of then-Rep. William Jefferson or the millions in cash accrued by ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham as bribes. But the rot sometimes went deeper. Tom Delay was convicted of money laundering not for personal gain but as part of a machine-building effort to help Republicans gain control of the Texas legislature. DeLay was also dinged for offering inappropriate inducements to secure votes from House Republicans for the Bush administration’s 2003 Medicare bill. And while the conviction of Sen. Ted Stevens was ultimately overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct, the sense that his career was fundamentally dedicated to pork-barrel politics is hard to escape. In respo...