Eminentoes/House Porker
Brooks, David
EMINENTOES HOUSE PORKER by David Brooks B ecause God made only one Mis- sissippi River, Jamie Whitten was forced to overrule Him. Though he doesn't make the papers, Whitten is one of the most...
...In fact, he opened that 1984 newsletter with this job description: "The real title of the position I hold is `Representative in Congress.' This is somewhat like being a lawyer who tries a lawsuit...
...But as his effort was getting underway Mt...
...His press releases are as frequent as Halley's comet...
...the wrenching Civil War...
...This does not change the fact that outlays often exceed budget authority, no matter how much they are papered down...
...and its emergence as an international power...
...Even Whitten seemed a bit ashamed...
...William Dannemeyer vented his frustration on the floor: "This continuing resolution illustrates the maxim that runs through all of them...
...It's just torture to sit there and understand what the man is saying," says somebody who has to work with him closely...
...and much more...
...What Does 'Human Nature' Mean...
...Here are the Cassette-of-the Mouth Club categories and a sampling of just a few of the important, stimulating selections you will receive...
...Today's lifestyles make most of us pressed for time...
...Whitten stares down at his desk and grins...
...Recently I asked his press secretary (who must be lonelier than a Maytag repair man) for some newsletters Whitten had sent home to the district...
...And here Whitten stands in telling contrast to the current stereotype of the media-hungry congressman...
...In forty-five years, he has never held a press conference...
...Last fall a survey revealed that only 34 percent of the people in Jamie Whitten's district recognize their Congressman's name—that after four decades of service...
...Last September, the halls outside the House Appropriations Committee were packed with agency representatives, lobbyists, and special interest arm-twisters as Whitten's committee divvied up fiscal year 1987...
...Topics include Framework for New Knowledge...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1987...
...What they are doing is licking the spoon...
...He is one of the most astute observers of the ever-changing and, it seems, ever-deteriorating federal budget process...
...Nicknamed the permanent secretary of agriculture, he has dominated the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture for the past thirty-five years...
...There is little press coverage (because few readers are interested, and fewer reporters understand the process), and the bills must always pass (if there are no appropriations, government closes down...
...They go out and vote for the man...
...For all his efforts, it ranks 427th out of 436 congressional districts in per capita income...
...He won't campaign the way other people do...
...He resembles more a lawyer, steering his way through the intricacies of the process, than a legislator...
...Shakespeare and the...
...When asked about his latest amendment to an appropriations bill, he shambles forth with a long series of half-chewed words that glaze the eyes of his listeners...
...His sentences burst forth like buckshot, but quickly fade into a series of semi-audible reverberations...
...It is called the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway...
...They prefer Jamie Whitten's maxim, "Pork is what's in the other fellow's district...
...Which Cassette-of-the-Month Club series is for you...
...YES, I want to join Cassette-of-the Month Club...
...Our 15th year...
...Forty-five years in Washington haven't diluted that Mississippi drawl...
...Unable to complete its budget-making on time, Congress has had to rely on Continuing Resolutions, massive stopgap funding measures that keep the government in operation...
...Though Ronald Reagan won his district easily in 1984, Whitten backs the President less than anybody else in the Mississippi delegation, only 33 percent of the time in 1985...
...Someobservers found the episode extremely offensive...
...Here's an opportunity to add a new dimension to your life...
...Then, of course, there are other tricks...
...They just don't seem to think there is anything they can do about it...
...I do not think there is abig enough trough in Christendom to accommodate the snouts that seek to feed at the public's expense...
...Titles include W.H...
...Sneaky...
...sette it is possible to listen, learn, and grow while we drive, cook, jog, or perform a hundred other duties during the day...
...Whitten realized how much he could help his district as chairman...
...Edward de Bono...
...LITERATURE AND GREAT WRITERS...
...It cuts a 234-mile trench in northeast Mississippi, through Jamie Whitten's district...
...There is a kind of patient, Job-like despair down here," he says...
...These are tapes to treasure...
...Richard Bolling, the re- tired Democrat from Missouri, told Jonathon Rauch of the National Journal, "I think he's one big puddle of sneak...
...It was clear that they had voted opposite the way they intended...
...Rep...
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...Whitten uses his expertise to manipulate the budget for the sake of his 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1987 clients...
...In that fast and furious atmosphere, spending programs pile on fast...
...Philosophic labels don't make sense on congressmen like Jamie Whitten...
...and many others...
...The Ancient Mediterranean View of Man...
...His home county, Tallahatchie, is among the poorest in the United States...
...How could something so routine be wrong...
...He became a reliable ally to Tip O'Neill, voting against aid to the contras and for the ERA...
...He'll attend a couple of fish fries if people throw them for him...
...Please enter my membership, at $59.50 plus $6.00 for postage and handling, in the following category (choose one): ^ Mind-Stretchers ^ American History ^ Literature & Great Writers Name (print) Address Apt...
...The two members protested but Whitten said it was too late to change...
...To many congressmen, the question is irrelevant...
...A number of people who work around him insist that Whitten is a genuine idiot...
...English Language...
...He boasts that his appropriations are often AMERICAN HISTORY SERIES Wounded American General Herkimer still directing his troops after British ambush at Oriskany,1777...
...Cassette-of-the-Month Club membership, that we offer this guarantee: Should you wish to cancel your membership simply inform us to that effect and the full unused portion of your payment will be immediately refunded to you...
...In this mess, Whitten thrives...
...Whitten is a workhorse, dedicated more to the well-being of congressional institutions than he is to any set of ideas...
...The thing that interests me is the failure of these people even to have any sense of hope or indignation about any of this...
...For less than $5 a month, you will receive twelve carefully selected audio cassettes, plus a free, vinyl storage album to house the entire series...
...A lawyer who doesn't recognize when the conditions and jury have changed is not much of a lawyer...
...Snow...
...the industrial growth of the U.S...
...Whitten's Appropriations Committee is charged with allocating the broad spending targets set by the Budget Committees...
...Second, Whitten LITERATURE AND GREAT WRITERS SERIES A contemporary cartoon of Mark Twain astride the celebrated jumping frog, his first popular story...
...He's not a very high profile person," says Joe Rutherford, an editor at the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal...
...Tom Edsell, an academic and an associate editor at the Southern Partisan, has kept tabs on Whitten for a number of years...
...Only later, if at all, do they understand which one of Whitten's schemes they have just supported...
...The story goes around Capitol Hill that one congressman, Joel Pritchard of Seattle, launched a campaign against the Tenn-Tom...
...Whitten's signature is his mumble...
...In the mid-1970s it became clear that the Appropriations Committee chair was about to be vacated by George Mahon, who had brought honor to the position since 1964...
...Yours to keep—and share—for a lifetime...
...It tastes pretty good and they know that's all there is...
...AMERICAN HISTORY...
...The federal aid was dispatched to Seattle, and in January 1985, the Tenn-Tom Waterway, one of the biggest boondoggles in federal history, was completed...
...So take advantage of this no-risk offer today...
...City State Zip Method of payment: ^ Enclosed is my check or money order, or: ^ Charge to my credit card: ^ VISA ^ MasterCard ^ AmEx ^ Diners Club ^ Carte Blanche Card * Exp...
...He'll answer constituent letters...
...When the money for the essentials runs out midway through the next fiscal MIND-STRETCHERS SERIES In this 16th century woodcut, a philosopher seeks to discover the machinery that moves the stars...
...There may be ten people in [Congress] who know what's in it," Rep...
...But Jamie Whitten's own district illustrates the bankruptcy of these expectations...
...Jacques Barzun...
...His colleagues nod in confusion and vote yes...
...He began his defense of the bill by saying, "I just work here...
...A few years earlier, one staffer remembers, he gave a quick gavel to George O'Brien, who was then battling a fatal illness, and doing his best to fulfill his duties...
...I f you find your enjoyment in the world of ideas, you'll want to join the exciting new Cassette-of-the-Month Club...
...Drawn from Audio-Forum's extensive collection of audio tapes, each thoughtprovoking cassette will broaden your knowledge and give you fresh, new insights...
...Each cut of pork gets yelped throughCongress with assurances that it will create jobs and restore prosperity...
...Barney Frank, who has a speech impediment, once joked that he and Jamie Whitten would be the two biggest beneficiaries of bilingual education...
...Presented in a series of interesting and dramatic vignettes...
...If the subject is a chunk of especially self-serving agriculturalpork, he will drone on and on about the beauty of the land and the nobility of the farmer, sounding like some Jeffersonian gone delirious...
...Now chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, he leads the body that substantially determines where federal money goes and why...
...We at Audio-Forum are so confident that you will be delighted with yourfinagles with the mix of spending, shifting defense dollars into water projects, or energy-related pork...
...The Nature of Liberty...
...But all committee chairmen must be elected by the Democratic Caucus, and Whitten's record—he voted against Medicare, food stamps, welfare programs, and in 1956 signed the segregationist Southern Manifesto —was offensive to the party's liberal majority...
...and many more mind-stretching subjects...
...Alan Watts...
...MIND-STRETCHERS...
...His support from labor rose inversely...
...He is also the master of the quick gavel...
...Mark Twain: The Eternal Boy...
...In this series, historian Kenneth Bruce recounts that incredible story of our nation from its touch-and-go beginnings to its confident maturity...
...Whitten brags that his annual agricultural spending bills cost less than presidential requests, but often he redirects money away from essential price supports towards pet spending programs...
...A year or so ago two Republicans found themselves confused about a key committee vote...
...Though he doesn't make the papers, Whitten is one of the most important men in Washington...
...How to Change Ideas...
...Whitten decided that the incident would have to undergo thorough study before federal relief money could be sent in...
...The senior member of the House of Representatives, he was first elected when Pearl Harbor was just a gleam in General Tojo's eye...
...His interest in geology proved to be short-lived, however, when Pritchard soon backed off on his challenge to Tenn-Tom...
...For the past several years, the process has been even more muddled...
...But those who know him better insist Whitten manipulates his mumble to best advantage...
...David Obey told Congressional Quarterly, "and that's the way we run the government for a year...
...But with the audio casbelow White House requests...
...Last fall he migrated from hishome in South Carolina to manage the Republican effort to oust the congressman...
...Opposing legislators, fed up with Whitten's incoherence, complain that Whitten _should come with his own translator...
...In the first place, his committee is most concerned with budget authority, paper spending allocations, and it sometimes acts as if outlays, actual spending, were somebody else's problem...
...date Signature 011 ela TO ORDER BY PHONE, CALL TOLL-FREE -800-243-1234 mail to: BUOICI•CCIRIJIri , Suite P218, 96 Broad St., Guilford, CT 06437 (203) 453-9794 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1987 29 year, the Administration has to come back and ask for a supplemental appropriation...
...When somebody mentions Jamie Whitten in our district, you think of two things, Tenn Tom and highway 72," says Gary Matland...
...His Americans for Conservative Action rating declined from 91 in 1972 to 28 a decade later...
...Auden and the Writers of the 1930's...
...Nevertheless, during the Carter presidency, Whitten delivered 1,811 projects to his district, totaling $1.27 billion in direct aid and another $50 million in loan guarantees...
...Members in committee constantly joke about the level of pork in their bills...
...So he changed his mind on those issues...
...the exploration the West...
...And when it comes to national programs they fall back on another of Whitten's maxims: "The whole country is in somebody's district," the obvious corollary being: Go ahead, spend...
...Bigger than the Panama Canal, it cost $1.8 billion, a sum which appalled other members of Congress, especially so because nobody knew why the canal was being built, except that Jamie Whitten and Mississippi Senator John Stennis wanted it...
...Choose this series and hear the actual voices of world-renowned authors and critics such as Stephen Spender, Angus Wilson, Louis Untenneyer, Brendan Behan, Gilbert Highet, John Simon...
...Is Strom Thurmond's Rural Electrification pork or community development...
...Nevertheless, Whitten captured 66 percent of the vote in the 1986 election...
...The Appropriations bills are written very quickly (because the Budget Committees don't finish their work until late in the fiscal year...
...Aboveboard and shameless, he'll promise support for a colleague's pork in exchange for support for his own...
...You will hear the voices and ideas of some of the world's great innovators and problem solvers, including Buckminster Fuller...
...Prince of the pork barrelers, he helped build a second Mississippi River with federal funds...
...But, as usual, Whitten isn't being completely candid...
...Whitten noticed and gaveled the vote to a close...
...Arnold J. Toynbee...
...He's rather withdrawn...
...Idries Shah...
...This year's CR accounts for over $500 billion, and it was written by a small group of appropriators led by Jamie Whitten...
...Helens erupted, spewing ash and destruction onto his state...
...They don't bother to know who he is or to get mad at him...
...Pork is one thing he is candid about...
...nobody, they say, could affect stupidity so masterfully...
...W bitten is not the biggest spender in Congress—far from it...
...Tenn-Tom hasn't paid a whole lot of dividends in northeast Mississippi," says Gary Matland, editorial-page editor at a local paper, the Daily CorDavid Brooks writes on politics for National Review and the Washington Times...
...Silvio Conte called the 1985 CR "753 pages of primal urge...
...Is Orrin Hatch's Jobs Corps pork or workfare...
...Finally, he produced a twoyear-old sheet, mostly white space, that mentioned a few of Whitten's recent projects—a weather station, airport improvements, roads, federally funded tourist attractions—and not much else...
...inthian, but Mississippians remain "cautiously optimistic" that all those federal dollars will have an impact someday...
...Relive the Revolutionary War...
...In the corrosive pedantocracy that is the congressional budget process congressmen grow less conscious of distinctions between pork barrel spending and substantive spending...
Vol. 20 • April 1987 • No. 4
