North Star Writers Group - Syndicated Commentary: Opinion, Humor and Features

Most of Washington is too shallow to recognize a substantive policy move if it hits them in the face strapped to the grill of a truck. So after telling the nation not to bother watching President Bush’s final State of the Union address, the Washington press corps was too busy telling us how unsuccessful it was to tell us much of what he actually said.

You might want to go to WhiteHouse.gov and watch it yourself. Reading the post-speech analysis is a waste of your time. It wasn’t the greatest speech ever given by a long shot, but it did contain a highlight that could have an enormous and positive impact on the nation.

Earmarks are a sneaky method by which members of Congress secure spending measures for pet projects for their districts or other major political allies. The sneakiest form of earmark is one dropped into a conference report after the House and Senate have both already voted to approve a bill. This lets you get your pork without risking a debate or a vote on the floor.

Bush said on Monday that he is issuing an executive order telling federal agencies not to spend earmarks that come about in this way. He signed the order the following day.

If you read most coverage of the speech, you don’t even know about this. Washington reporters are too busy trying to decode the political themes or assail the notion of Bush’s “legacy” to simply tell you what he said.

So let’s consider – since no one else is going to – the potential implications of this executive order.

Most of the pork barrel projects funded by Congress are complete garbage. They fund projects back home that local communities should fund by themselves or do without. Everything from bike trails to highway interchanges to Alaskan bridges to nowhere get funded in this manner so the congressman can send out press releases announcing how he brought home the bacon.

But the congressman only wants publicity back home. If he gets it in the rest of the country, everyone will know he is wasting taxpayer money. And while that may not stop him from getting re-elected by his grateful local constituents, it’s still a hassle he doesn’t want or need.

So Republicans and Democrats alike have an understanding. I’ll vote for your project, you vote for mine. And everyone keeps it on the QT. No messy floor debates. No recorded votes. No unnecessary opportunities for scrutiny.

Bush’s proposed executive order won’t end pork barrel spending, but it will make it much more difficult for members of Congress to quietly get their projects approved. That is only a start, but it’s a huge start. It won’t make much difference if the heightened opportunity for scrutiny doesn’t result in widespread exposure of the waste, and color me skeptical that the Washington press corps objects to pork barrel spending enough to actually expose it.

But where the journos neglect their duties, bloggers and activist groups can pick up the slack. That’s why Bush’s executive order has a chance to go a long ways toward getting Congress’s annual bloat-fest under control.

So why did Bush wait until his final year in office to do this? He shouldn’t have. He should have put the screws to the horrible big-spending Republican Congress instead of waiting for the Democrats to take charge.

But which of his predecessors took this action? None. A president who actually fixes a problem in his final year in office can always be skewered for having waited so long, but unless you subscribe to the notion that Bush should have fixed every imaginable problem already, how can you fault him now for taking an action that needs to be taken?

The beauty of the executive order strategy is that it should, at least in theory, be politically difficult for his successor to rescind the order. How exactly would you explain that one?

“The order that prevented members of Congress from secretly wasting money without anyone finding out about it is hereby rescinded!”

One would think that would invite a substantial amount of heat. That’s assuming, of course, that official Washington and the press corps actually objects to Congress’s current spending habits, and that they wouldn’t celebrate the reversal of anything Bush did simply because Bush did it.

If pork barrel spending is significantly more under control five or 10 years from now, this executive order may prove to have been one of the most important actions in bringing about that change. Unlike most of the Washington establishment, I don’t think Bush sits around obsessing over his legacy. But that would be a nice legacy to leave, and it would serve as a useful reminder that a so-called “lame duck” president can still make a substantive impact on the nation’s future – even if those who cover him are too substance-challenged to know what that means.