pork vs. the navy: guess who wins?
April 14, 2006 11:19 AM
UPI reports that Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), is trying to force the U.S. Navy to pay shipbuilder Northrop Grumman up to $500M for "business disruption" costs due to hurricane Katrina:
The Pentagon and House Republicans are opposing the language in the $106.5 billion bill that would require the Navy to pay the defense giant for "business disruption" costs in advance of any insurance settlement. Such costs generally are covered by insurance, but Northrop and its insurer are in litigation over damage to a Northrop facility in Mississippi, Cochran's home state.
Northrop would have to reimburse the Navy later, but the Pentagon fears that money might not materialize. "We don't think it's in our best interests to do this," said Capt. Tom Van Leunen, chief spokesman for the Navy's acquisition office.
Payments to Northrop could range anywhere from $150 million to the full $500 million out of up to $2.7 billion in appropriated funds for Katrina-related damage, depending on the outcome of negotiations. That could defer necessary Navy expenditures for a year or more.
"We budgeted [the request] for government facilities. That does not include fixing a Northrop Grumman crane," Van Leunen said.
A Northrop spokesman said the money would be used -- not for facilities damage -- but for overhead costs incurred by delivery delays as Congress intended. The company is not "seeking a bailout, but rather payment to the shipyards to help in the restoration and recovery of these shipyards to pre-Katrina performance levels," said Northrop spokesman Randy Belote.
On a completely unrelated note, let's check who Senator Cochran's top campaign contributors are:
THAD COCHRAN: CAREER PROFILE (SINCE 1989)
Top Contributors
1 BellSouth Corp $33,250
2 Northrop Grumman $33,175
Come on, Northrop --- spend the measly $76 and be number one!
But no worries, that's why each state has two Senators, so if one is in the bag to pork-barrel interests, the other can step in as the voice of reason and stand up for fiscal responsibility.
Oh. Never mind.
What repeatedly amazes me about "access buying" is just how cheap our representatives sell out. Northrop Grumman forks over $33,175 and they may get back between $150,000,000 and $500,000,000.
Not a bad investment return.
I don't know what TypeKey is, but I'll Google it as soon as I leave here.
Yours is a valiant site, and you fight the good fight. But let me put one across your bow.
Senators are regionalists, properly dedicated to the interests of their states, which they understand very clearly. Their constituents keep them in office for many reasons, but certainly they expect these fellas to move capital -- read gummint money -- into their states in the form of jobs, grants, and lashings of pork. We tend to look at that expectation and hope as sinful; well, the nation as a whole would look on in perfect equanimity while some (many?) states, otherwise starved of capital, simply languished. Dammit, we do not hire congresspeople to be fiscally responsible to the nation, and the constitution does not lay that burden upon them; they are there to bring the bacon home: to keep jobs and money going to where they would not go were we at war or otherwise in crisis. We Americans do not yearn after egalitarian societies as do Europeans. We do, however, tend to resist arguments that would have our national resources spent only where a rationalized bureauocracy would have them go, and that is why our congresspeople are pledged to us and not to them.
Perhaps I put it badly, but that's a powerful argument for pork; maybe you could speak to it.
All the best
Bob
Bob- true and not true. Blatant pork tends to not be terribly popular even at the local level- people are smart enough to realize the larger problem. Where the "spoils" mentality does apply is in projects of less dubious value, like the Big Dig here in Boston. It was definitely worth doing, and unquestionably the government's job, but not so clear how much should be paid by people living in Boise instead of Worcester. Certainly the project never would have happened the way it did if not for Ted K, Joe Moakley, and Tip O'Neill.