A pork project of elephantine proportions
April 10, 2002

When one thinks of pork, the names of two famous — or infamous — senators comes to mind for “bringing home the bacon.” They are West Virginia’s Bobby Byrd (D) and Mississippi’s Trent Lott (R). It was Byrd, after all, who once tried to get the CIA to move its headquarters to West Virginia for him, and Lott who seems to believe that anything the federal government builds, buys or does ought to be built, bought or done somewhere in Mississippi.

It turns out, though, that these guys are pikers. The world-class operators in this game are from much, much further north — in Alaska.

Indeed, the all-Republican team of Rep. Don Young in the House and Frank Murkowski and Ted Stevens in the Senate from Alaska make everyone else look like amateurs. At least that’s the view of Citizens Against Government Waste, which is this week issuing its 12th annual Congressional Pig Book.

Since 1995, the average representative or senator has been able to come up with about $150 or so in pork per constituent. The Alaskans, by contrast, have brought home roughly 18 times this much or $2,791 per constituent.

Now, these guys make up an incredibly effective team and their focus on delivering for the folks to the north is, shall we say, unwavering. Some of what they’ve managed to do over the years is even commendable, but occasionally they go over the line.

That’s what happened recently on the Senate floor with the approval by 93 to 5 of an amendment to the energy bill. It mandates that if a natural gas pipeline is ever built to deliver Alaskan natural gas to markets in the rest of the country it will have to follow a circuitous route through Alaska. The amendment won the support of Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.) and was viewed by many in his party and within the environmental community as a compensation prize for the Alaskans who aren’t going to be allowed to drill for or deliver Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) oil.

The amendment was essentially sprung on the Senate and only a few senators even spoke against it, but a lot of them thought they smelled something objectionable.

It turns out that the amendment was designed to make certain that an alternative pipeline route through Canada would be taken off the table. That route, it seems, is far more economically viable than the Alaskan route, which would have to traverse some 900 miles of Alaska’s most rugged mountains. What’s more, a number of private investors have actually shown an interest in building the pipeline through Canada, but none have evinced the slightest interest in the all-Alaskan route.

So as it stands right now, the amendment adopted before the recess simply guarantees that no pipeline at all will be built. The answer to that, however, is simple. Murkowski is preparing to introduce another amendment that will grant a subsidy to gas producers in Alaska and to the pipeline company that will get his pipeline built — at a potential cost to the rest of us of as much as $30 billion. That’s pork with a capital “P.”

That money, in the form of tax credits to Alaskan oil producers (mainly Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum and Phillips) and whatever entity they set up to actually build the Murkowski line will be paid out over 15 years.

The good senator and his allies argue that if gas prices overall go up enough between now and the time the pipeline opens, the needed subsidy could be reduced or even eliminated. The problem is that no independent analysts believe that is going to happen.
Instead, not satisfied from the simple royalties that would flow to Alaska if gas flows through just any old pipeline, our team of inveterate Alaska-firsters is after it all — the royalties and the jobs and the profits that go with building the pipeline along their chosen route.

If their colleagues don’t stand up and vote against this one, they will have guaranteed that a non-economic boondoggle of historically unique proportions will be built with federal subsidies when an alternative was available that would not have cost the American taxpayers a penny.

Moreover, by allowing subsidized natural gas into an incredibly volatile market, they will screw up that market. At the same time they’ll look the other way while major oil companies blast through 900 miles of one of the most rugged and scenic mountain ranges in the world.

This is way out of Lott’s class, but it’s just the sort of thing that could get them made honorary West Virginians.

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David Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union and a Washington-based government affairs consultant