Your tax money at work: $190,000 for the Motor Racing Museum of the South in Spartanburg, S.C.; $2.25 million to provide winter amusement opportunities for military personnel and civilians at the North Star Borough Birch Hill recreation area in Alaska, and $1.5 million for the University of Missouri's Center for Gender Physiology so it can study gender-related issues in space flight crews.

That's not the worst of it, either. According to the Citizens Against Government Waste, a total of $1.57 billion in pork barrel waste was earmarked by lawmakers in the fiscal 2002 funding bill for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

That's down 3 percent from $1.62 billion in fiscal '01. But the number of individual HUD/VA projects increased by 19 percent, from 1,200 to 1,428. So the reckless spenders in Washington are paying out less per project, but they're financing more of them. And you wonder where the budget surplus has gone?

According to CAGW, a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization which has taken it upon itself to eliminate waste, mismanagement and inefficiency in the federal government, Congress pigged out with a record 801 grants under HUD's economic development initiative program, including one for a music conservatory in Westchester County, N.Y., one of the richest counties in the country.

Although members of the House requested nothing under EDI for fiscal '02 and the Senate asked for just $130 million worth, the conference committee ended up with $294 million, including a total of $15 million for theaters, museums, performing arts centers and opera houses.

At least the big spenders have a cultural bent.

That's how it works on Capital Hill. Appropriators frequently disregard the budget requests of the various federal agencies. Instead, they earmark thousands or unrequested and non-competitive projects of dubious distinction. And if you are not a member of either Appropriations Committees, you simply promise votes on other issues in return for funding for your pet project back home.

"They get the goods through a form of legal money laundering, but taxpayers receive only inflated taxes and a bloated bureaucracy," CAGW says in the latest edition of the "Pig Book Summary."

Of course, HUD/VA appropriators are hardly alone. The porkers almanac counts 8,341 projects totaling $20.1 billion in the 13 different funding bills that symbolize the most egregious and blatant examples of pork. The worst offenders were three powerful senior legislators -- the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), and two democrats, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

Sen. Stevens is listed first, not just because of his longevity but also because he's the leader of the pack, winning $711 in pork per capita for the people of Alaska. That's 22 times the national average. Sens. Inouye and Byrd were the runners up, with $353 and $215 per capita, respectively, for their constituents.

Incidently, for an item to be considered pork by CAGW, it has to meet one of seven criteria, though most in the book satisfy at least two:

• Requested by only one chamber of Congress.
• Not specifically authorized.
• Not competitively awarded.
• Not requested by the President.
• Greatly exceeds the President's budget request or the previous year's funding.
• Not the subject of congressional hearings.
• Serves only a local or special interest.

Published: May 15, 2002

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

When Lew Sichelman first started writing about housing in 1969, he was the youngest real estate writer in the country. Now, 37 years later, he's one of the oldest -- and most decorated. He has been rated the top housing columnist in the country by the National Association of Realtors as well as by his peers in the National Association of Real Estate Editors. Indeed, NAREE has recognized his work on numerous occasions. One year - due to his advancing age, he can't recall which one - he earned top honors in the annual NAREE Journalism Contest in three out of the four major writing categories. It was the first time one writer has won so many NAREE awards in a single year. Known for his ability to make even the most difficult topics understandable, Sichelman also has been honored by the National Association of Home Builders and the Mortgage Bankers Association. He began providing in-depth coverage of and consumer-oriented information about housing and housing finance at the Washington Daily News, where he was real estate editor. He held that same position for nine more years at the Washington Star, which purchased the News in 1972. The Star, a so-called "writer's newspaper" which also had the misfortune of being an evening paper, was put out of its misery in 1981, and Sichelman, who had begun self-syndicating his column in 1978, decided to become a full-time columnist. Today, his column, "The Housing Scene," is distributed by United Media to newspapers throughout the country. He also is on the staff of National Mortgage News, an independent newspaper which is considered the bible of the mortgage business. And he writes for numerous other publications, including MarketWatch.com, where he answers readers questions once a week, Sports Illustrated (don't ask), RealtyTimes.com, BigBuilder and others. Sichelman is married, the father of five and grandfather of eleven.