This is the time of year when Washington’s politicians go gangbusters in announcing the funding that they’ve brought back to their districts. The monies they speak of are used to fund feel-good projects – parks, buildings, organizations – that tend to leave a good taste in voters’ mouths, making the incumbents’ efforts easier in the election races of the coming months.

Such expenditures are typically dedicated as "member items" by politicos and are better known to taxpayers as "pork." It can be concurred that most of these projects are actions of political PR and don’t merit the funding they receive and, hence, are a waste of taxpayer money.

Despite such logic this spending has become so out of control in recent years that budgeted federal expenditures have risen by more than $900 billion since 2001, an increase of fifty percent. This impropriety is projected to create a budget deficit in excess of $300 billion this year, $30 billion of which can be directly attributed to pork.

Albany’s politicians are no better at managing our money. Their budget for 2006 – 2007 includes $200 million in pork spending. They, too, are now playing the PR game, using the newspapers and airwaves to spread the word of what wondrous projects they have in the works for their communities.

Come November, politicians on all fronts will yet again win the mind game associated with this pork barrel spending. Pork is one of their most powerful tools and it creates an illusion whereby the voters are wowed by what their representative in the Capitol has done for their district. So, even though voters believe politicians as a whole are bad, they are brainwashed into believing their elected official is looking out for them.

Accordingly, job security is the payback politicians expect from pork, and more often than not it is the payback they get. Despite overall job satisfaction ratings in the 30% to 50% range, there exists stagnation in Washington, as overall incumbency rates have been in excess of 90% in recent elections, topping out at an ungodly 98% in 2000.

Albany’s incumbency rate is just as monstrous - again in the upper-90% range – and is consistently the highest in United States. This occurs despite our state assembly and senate creating what is the highest tax burden in the nation.

As reckless as pork spending may be, this can all be changed if even just a little bit.

Pork spending remains high at the national level due to the ability to pass pork through the system as add-ons to what could have been well-conceived bills and budgetary allotments. In last week’s radio address George W Bush spoke of this issue and the need for the US Senate to sign-off on a bill that would give considerable line item veto power to the President.

This would allow Bush and future presidents to strip away specific items of pork that had been hidden in budget bills. As it stands now, the President is compelled to sign-off on bills that are 90% real and 10% pork - despite knowing it is bad business - because he is not granted full power to separate the good from the bad.

If he had that power the President would be the ultimate fiscal watchdog for Congress and, as his role dictates, the voice for ALL Americans, Americans who as a whole want less federal spending. Governors in 43 states now have this veto responsibility over their governments and with the case of New York, where would we be without it? Even with this power we are sporting a $230 billion debt.

In the end, pork barrel spending is in stark contrast to the fiscal common sense we all desire and it proves one thing: Give the politicians money, even that they do not have, and they will spend it in order to win your votes. There are only two means by which to stop this insanity. One way is to not give them the job security they desire, the other is to invoke power from the heads of our states and the nation itself.

Ultimately, the former is the most preferred route to take, because when someone has to be responsible with how our money is spent, the voters and taxpayers are apt to be more so than the politicians. After all, it’s our money, not theirs.