Pelosi in top spot to bring home the pork
By SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - House Speaker Tip O'Neill secured down payments for Boston's Big Dig. Sam Rayburn sent gushers of cash back to Texas, along with tax breaks that helped its oil industry.
Now Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco is poised to follow them as House speaker -- a perch predecessors used to channel big cash to pet projects back home.
''There's a long tradition where not only can you bring back your average pork as a member of Congress, but speaker pork gives you a lot of money, a lot of influence over the purse,'' said Julian E. Zelizer, a congressional historian at Boston University.
Democrat Pelosi will be the first Californian to hold the post, and congressional watchdogs say they'll be observing her new spending clout with great interest.
There are ''a lot of peeping chicks everywhere,'' said Tim Ransdell, executive director of the California Institute for Federal Policy Research in Washington, D.C. ''And implicitly the House speaker has a nice war chest to start with.''
Aides to Pelosi don't dispute that the state will benefit from a changing of the guard at the Capitol.
''From the speaker's chair to committee chairs, Californians in Congress will have additional clout to help the home state,'' said Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider.
But less than a week after the election, Pelosi has no specific wish list for her home district, Crider said.
As she has moved up through the ranks of spending committees and the Democratic leadership, Pelosi has already helped send millions of dollars back home.
According to Citizens Against Government Waste, a federal spending watchdog, in the past two fiscal years, Pelosi has helped obtain:
• $6.7 million for the Presidio Dental Clinic.
• $2.1 million for the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.
• $388,000 to the Filipino Cultural Center in San Francisco for ''rehabilitation.''
As she prepares to assume one of the most powerful posts in Congress, second in the line of succession to the presidency, the pressure to funnel money to the San Francisco Bay Area is bound to increase, Ransdell said.
''The transportation crowd will want rebuilding of freeways or the Bay Bridge access, or else more money for a transit project here or there,'' he said. ''The social-services community will want additional funding perhaps for a welfare program, or else maybe construction of additional low-income housing or homeless housing.''
As she considers those requests for hometown projects, Pelosi has powerful partners: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose home base is also San Francisco. With Democrats taking over the Senate, Feinstein will likely assume leadership of an influential spending subcommittee.
California's junior senator, Democrat Barbara Boxer, has roots just outside San Francisco in Marin County and will assume the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, key in transportation projects and climate-change research.
Pelosi is set to ascend to speaker in January, and House and Senate members typically make their spending requests to key committee members by February. But interest groups are already lining up.
Pelosi identified stem cell research as one the Democrats' top six priorities during this year's campaign. That has raised hopes at the San Francisco-based California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state's stem cell agency.
Robert Klein, who chairs the committee that oversees the agency, said he chatted with Pelosi three days before the election about her commitment to stem cell research.
During their brief conversation, Pelosi made no federal funding pledge to the stem cell agency, which is authorized to dole out about $3 billion in state bond money for stem cell research.
Still, Klein said the agency will benefit from Pelosi's new influence in passing favorable legislation expanding research funding elsewhere in the country while squelching unfavorable bills such as one that would have criminalized human embryonic stem cell research.
''Expectations are going to be, 'Oh gosh, the floodgates are going to open in California,''' said Scott Sudduth, the University of California's liaison to the federal government.
While Sudduth said that is probably unrealistic, he said he was hopeful that broad political changes will benefit UC. ''It's not for a specific project per se, but it will be (helpful) for more investment in federal research and development,'' he said.
With Congress certain to intensify its interest in alternative energy and biotechnology, Sudduth said UC officials met with Pelosi several weeks ago to make sure she knew the university system's resources are available, Sudduth said.
And having a California speaker can help the federal agencies that finance that research maintain their funding -- money that trickles down to UC's research institutions, he said.
In September, the House changed its rules to end secret pork projects. The resolution banned a practice in which lawmakers anonymously insert ''earmarks'' -- narrowly tailored spending that often helps a specific company or project in their district -- into bills.
The measure required lawmakers to identify the special projects they slip into legislation. Pelosi voted against it. Crider said Pelosi wanted a more stringent package of rules, but that measure ultimately failed.
One of Pelosi's first actions in January will be to try again to pass ''a strong rules package'' that would among other thing renew and strengthen the ban on secret earmarks, Crider said.
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