Bears, pork, and America in crisis: Bernd Debusmann

Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own

By Bernd Debusmann

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five years ago, John McCain raised laughter on the Senate floor when he ridiculed a $3 million study of grizzly bears in Montana, using their DNA, and held it up as an example of wasteful government spending.

"Imagine...how this might be used," the Arizona senator said. "Approach a bear: that bear cub over there claims you are his father, and we need to take your DNA. Approach another bear: two hikers had their food stolen by a bear, and we think it is you. We have to get the DNA. The DNA doesn't fit, you got to acquit."

In the final stretch of the campaign for next month's presidential elections, the bear study story has become a feature of McCain speeches that stress the evil of out-of-control government spending and a budgetary process that features "earmarks" -- expenditure for a specific purpose tucked into a larger bill. Earmarks are relatives, but not identical twins, of "pork" and added some $18 billion to last year's budget.

"Pork projects are usually slipped into large spending bills without debate, competition, or input from relevant executive agencies," explains a briefing paper by Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based watchdog group. "The provisions...frequently appear in legislation only hours before Congress votes on appropriations bills."

Both McCain and his Democratic rival for the presidency, Barack Obama, have sworn off earmarks, as have five other senators and 41 members of the House of Representatives. But McCain has been so much more vocal than Obama on the matter that he has invited comparisons with Don Quixote, the fictional knight whose jousts with windmills symbolize hopeless battles.

Take the bear study and put it into perspective: its cost amounted to 0.017 percent of the $18 billion earmarks. The $18 billion, in turn, amount to a rounding error in an overall budget that exceeds $3 trillion. Also worth noting: McCain actually voted for the bill that contained the grizzly bear allocation.

The bears are a memorable campaign line and introduce a note of levity at a grim time of financial crisis. But the study is a bad example of wasted money and points to a somewhat bizarre sense of economic priorities, particularly at a time when the world is at the brink of a total financial meltdown.

(The senator is on record saying "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues").

The grizzly bear had been listed as an endangered species since 1975; there is a federal law, the Endangered Species Act, under which the government is supposed to obtain a population count. Bear haters would consider this frivolous spending, conservationists do not. There are parts of the country where the grizzly bear is held in high esteem - a grizzly adorns the state flag of California, for example.

(The result of the study, published late in September, showed the bear population at its highest in three decades. A decision on whether they still need federal protection is due next year).

DEAL-MAKING AND SWEETENERS

In McCain's first debate with Obama, the two rivals were asked what they would do to lead the United States out of its present crisis. "Well, the first thing we have to do is get spending under control in Washington," McCain said. "It's completely out of control. And the worst symptom of this disease...is earmarking and pork-barrel spending. It's a gateway to... corruption." That is the standard cue for the tale of the grizzly bears.

Nobody is in favor of corruption. But try and find an economist who agrees that cracking down on earmarks would solve the credit crisis that led Congress to pass a $700 billion bailout package to buy a mountain of bad debt from troubled banks.

The way the bill passed highlighted Washington's culture of vote-buying and horse-trading. Influence-peddling and deal-making are part of politics the world over but the earmarks system is peculiarly American.