Word: pork-barrel
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...measure was accepted only after laundry workers (who do not, after all, form much of a voting bloc in most constituencies) were excluded from coverage. The Administration's major triumph came on a measure well calculated to please the constituent-conscious Congressmen. It was a sprawling, $6 billion, pork-barrel housing bill, covering both low-and middle-income groups in both urban and rural areas...
...rushed off to the Speaker's Room to object: "A dangerous precedent!"* Cannon, a powerful, conservative man, brought welcome support to the Smith-Colmer forces: as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, he holds over each member the dreadful threat of excluding this or that congressional district from federal pork-barrel projects. Sitting quietly on an equally big pork barrel was another Judge Smith ally, Georgia's Carl Vinson, chairman of the Armed Services Committee...
...last week (see below) would have been a far weaker measure, all partisans admitted, but for the President's well-timed radio-and-television intervention. But his greatest battle was for fiscal stability, and his stand against free-handed spending last week withstood the nearly irresistible force of pork-barrel politics. Whipped. The clash: an all-out drive by House Speaker Sam Rayburn and his big Democratic majority to override the President's veto of the public-works appropriation bill, a $1.2 billion barrel full of rivers-and-harbors projects and other fat goodies dear to politicians...
...making his vetoes stick: of his first 143 vetoes. Congress failed to override a single one. Last week, just before he took off for Europe, the President jeopardized his perfect record with Veto No. 144. Turned down: the lardy, $1.2 billion public works bill, more popularly called "the pork-barrel bill." Objected Ike in his veto message: the bill included 67 new projects not listed in his budget. These projects would add only $50 million to outlays in the current budget, but "their ultimate cost wall be more than $800 million. This illustrates how easily effective control of federal spending...
Some of Congress' top Republicans, including Indiana's House Minority Leader Charles Halleck, advised Ike not to veto the pork-barrel bill, hog-fat as it was. It had passed the House by a voice vote and the Senate by a lopsided 82 to 9, and since it included projects for every state, a lot of Republicans would be tempted to vote to override the veto. Said Iowa's Congressman Ben Jensen, ranking Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee that drafted the measure: "I just can't see how the President could veto this bill." Before boarding...