Pork Barrel Laws are an everyday occurrence in the American government. Howard Scarrow shows this in his May 6 Village Times Herald article, "Our bacon, their park." His example of the recently proposed highway bill is a blatant denunciation of pork barrel legislation. He points out many causes of this distributive policy that would lead to laws such as the highway law. Pork barrel legislation allows a member of Congress to appeal to his constituents by adding seemingly small projects that would benefit his district, to a larger bill. This small piece of legislation is usually overlooked and passed along with the main part of the bill. In a sense, distributive politics is a sneaky way for congressmen to "bring home the bacon" for their constituents. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay It is quite obvious why members of Congress take part in distributive politics. Because a representative does something while in office, mainly to get re-elected. Especially in the House of Representatives, where the term of office is only two years, representatives are working hard to make their voters happy for the upcoming elections. Scarrow proves this point with highway law. Tim Bishop added forty-five million dollars in project money for his district to the account. Five million of those dollars will go toward building a Greenway Trail stretching from East Setauket to Port Jefferson Station. Tim Bishop was well aware that his park barrel projects were just a few of the 3,200 separate projects added to the highway law. This "raid" on the public treasury would cost taxpayers more than ten billion dollars and made no effort to help with the deficit. problem. Why do MPs allow such spending? Why do they allow the national budget to have a deficit of 478 billion dollars that will only cover the US debt of 7 trillion dollars? The answer is simple: they want to be re-elected. If Tim Bishop refused to take part in a bill that does nothing but increase America's debt, his district and his constituents would get nothing; and at the time of re-election the voters would have remembered that they had received nothing from his mandate. Pork barrel legislation is a way for members of Congress to show their constituents what big projects can be funded and use those programs to get re-elected. Distributive politics has flourished in American government through legislative processes in Congress. Pet projects like those in the highway bill are possible in the American government. James Madison said that America didn't need to worry about factions because in such a large country there would be so many factions that they would eliminate each other. What Madison did not foresee was that these factions would work together to advance their own agendas. Sort of like "I'll vote for your side of the bill if you vote for mine." Passing legislation is a long and complicated process that can be simplified if the bill is simply passed. So, if each member of Congress has a part of the bill that benefits his or her district, the bill will be easier to pass. Commissions are formed so that the work at the congress can be divided. This results in the passage of many bills based strictly on barrel issues.