Rasoul’s call is a right one

The former owner of a business specializing in women’s fitness, Sam Rasoul seeks to shave fat from the federal budget by eliminating pork. Given lawmakers’ appetite for excess and his slim chances of unseating eight-term incumbent Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Rasoul’s ambitions represent a stretch.
Though a political neophyte, Rasoul, a Democrat, bears a veteran politician’s affection for news conferences. His latest venture in free advertising pointed to a bill he would propose in the unlikely event voters afforded him a trip to Washington. Rasoul’s legislation would remove earmarks from lawmakers’ arsenal. “This bill,” Rasoul declared, “will define who I am.”
To this, Goodlatte sniffs. Attempts to target earmarks have been made before, among them an initiative he co-sponsored to create a bipartisan committee to study the topic. House Democrats, Goodlatte complained, defeated the effort.
Had that committee been formed it might have taken notice of $1.8 million in earmarks secured by Goodlatte, this according to a Heritage Foundation study released last year. Goodlatte’s goodie bag included $300,000 for the Wayne Theatre renovation project, a fitting symbol for the excesses Rasoul seeks to eliminate.
Backers of the theater insist the Wayne would revitalize downtown and so justifies an investment of public money. Voters are less sure. Their angst over city funding for the theater helped drive a conservative council bloc to power last spring.
Wonder what voters in, say, Idaho think of their tax money being directed to a project to restore a broken-down theater in Waynesboro? For an approximation of the feeling, consider that federal taxpayers in Waynesboro are helping pay $350,000 for an art center in Des Moines.
Like others in the Beltway’s pork set, which is to say almost everybody, Goodlatte spreads a thick layer of gravy. Others waddling to the Goodlatte trough: Roanoke’s historic district, fed $250,000; the Poplar Forest Retreat Home of Thomas Jefferson, $195,000; and The George C. Marshall Foundation, $146,000.
When the subject of these earmarks was raised last year, Goodlatte issued a statement of retort, which said, among other things: “It would be unfair to my constituents to fund projects elsewhere in the country but not in my own district.” Well, there you have it then. The translation is a cliché: Everybody else is doing it.
The combination of Goodlatte and everybody else produced more than 11,000 pork projects and $20 billion in pork spending in fiscal year 2008, according to Heritage research. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., dismissed the amount as “table scraps.” Those scraps, Heritage points out, added up to more than the combined federal taxes paid by 34 states and the District of Columbia.
Like many political aspirants, Rasoul doubtless envisions himself as cut from the cloth of Mr. Smith, an outsider willing to challenge the system’s powers. Rasoul’s fate, for the time being, will be less dramatic than the character made famous by Jimmy Stewart. Goodlatte’s hold on his Sixth District seat is iron. So, too, is the grip of pork spending on lawmakers and the electorate.
Though naïve in the fashion of Stewart’s Smith, Rasoul, who likely will never go to Washington, is right to want better.