Alabama Pork

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Sen. Richard Shelby has done something so blatant and stupid that not even the wingnuts are willing to defend him.

You've seen the reports that Sen. Richard Shelby (R) of Alabama has taken the perhaps unprecedented step of placing holds on ALL of President Obama's nominees until he gets the money for a couple of big earmarked pork barrel projects he feels entitled to back in his home state.

It's an eye-popper no doubt, with gallons more audacity than Obama ever could have hoped for. But I wonder if this story might not end up amounting to much more than the sum of its parts because it brings together three or four of the issues roiling American politics today in a bundle of smack-you-in-the-face arrogance that's too much to ignore.

For Republicans and the Tea Party set you've got pork-barrel spending and earmarks, two catchwords that are frequently abused and used to paint with too broad a brush but in this case seem pretty fairly to describe a senior senator's power to wrestle tens of billions of federal dollars back into his home state.

For Democrats, there's the outrage at archaic Senate obstructionism which has rapidly escalated from annoying to outrageous to pure comedy with a mind-numbing speed. It's the heart of the story about the demise of Health Care Reform, the slow death of so many unobjectionable nominees and much else.

Not even Captain Ed at wingnut central had anything nice to say.

The hold process is perfectly legitimate in stopping a bad candidate
from immediate confirmation.  It isn�t at all legitimate to hold up every single appointment
to demand more pork for one�s state, or favorable bid decisions, or any
other gimme impulse.  Regardless of who is President, the elected
executive is entitled to appoint people who want to implement his
policies, and the Senate should usually give the nominees the courtesy
of a floor vote, especially on political posts within the executive
branch, with the noted exceptions for questions of incompetence,
inexperience, or corruption.  Otherwise, a hold should focus on a
specific policy point associated with the nomination or on a critical
issue of national security.

Let�s not forget that we have criticized Obama for being so slow to
fill these positions.  We can hardly complain about that while
Republicans obstruct those appointments to gain more leverage on pork. 
And once again, we see how pork-barrel politics winds up distorting the
political process and making government less efficient.

So why does Shelby hate American corporations?  John Cole:

I�m not sure why anyone at all is surprised about this. First of all,
this is just a repeat performance for Shelby. You will remember, of
course, during the auto bailouts, Sen. Shelby and Sen. Corker
did everything they could to make sure that GM and Chrysler died, and
people remember that they were motivated in large part by their
insatiable desire to destroy the UAW and
weaken the power of unions nationwide. But the other reason Shelby and
Corker were so eager to see GM and Chrysler die was because of the large presence of foreign auto manufacturers
in their respective states. In other words, they are used to going to
bat for foreign manufacturers over the American people and American
industry. That is just how they roll.

But this is just another indication of how dysfunctional the Senate has become.  A none to bright Senator from a banana republic state can play tyrant and bring the Senate to a screeching halt.  Josh Marshall:

The only mystery about this one is which is more outrageous -- Shelby's
hold or the fact that the rest of the senators of both parties allow
it.