WASHINGTON -- Alaska's powerful congressional delegation, which brought home $705 million in special projects in 2005, may have much less to work with next year under new White House targets for cutting pork-barrel spending by half. While it remains to be seen if Congress cooperates, current political indicators suggest that the days of easy money in Washington are over, a situation that could undermine the clout of Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, Alaska's veteran "earmarkers." The economic ramifications could be felt throughout the state. From Native villages to the city of Anchorage, congressional earmarks pumped as much money into Alaska in 2005 as did the state's Permanent Fund dividend checks. Like that dividend, the federal cash has become part of the state's identity, sparking debate over Alaska's relationship to the Lower 48 and its frontier image of self-reliance. "It's a little bit like cowboy country up here," said Bruce Chambers, a commercial real estate broker who moved to Alaska in 1983 because of its strong sense of individualism and "environment at the next exponent." But to Chambers, whose business depends on road and sanitation infrastructure, the federal projects Stevens and Young steer into Alaska are a critical part of the state's development. "We definitely look to 'Uncle Ted' as the premier economic generator of the state," he said. TAP THE PERMANENT FUND?
In the past week, Stevens, Young and Sen. Lisa Murkowski have all sounded warnings about the new environment in Washington, where President Bush has vowed to cut congressional earmarks by half. Murkowski said she's been telling constituents that "the landscape is changing" in D.C. "That doesn't mean we're going to be cast out, but it does mean the way we operate is going to have to change a little bit," she said. One change, she said, could mean weaning the state from its dependence on the oil economy and federal aid -- meaning tapping the investment profits from the $38 billion Permanent Fund savings account to invest in renewable energy. In fact, all three D.C. lawmakers have suggested that Alaska might have to start using the Permanent Fund to meet the state's future infrastructure and development needs. "The interest from the fund should meet some of the needs that we've addressed through past earmarks," Stevens said. "The need for earmarks is disappearing as the state has matured." Young, though still in the hunt for federal dollars to lay a dam across the Susitna River, suggested last week that Permanent Fund dollars should be tapped as well. To critics of congressional pork-barrel spending, that's as it should be. "That big fat check everyone gets, they could use a little of that," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government-waste watchdog group that popularized the "Bridges to Nowhere" moniker in 2005 for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina bridges in Alaska. The Alaska delegation disputes that the famed Bridges to Nowhere were earmarks: The funding proposals were vetted in the House Transportation Committee, not hidden as last-minute additions to large spending bills. But in the popular mind, they became synonymous with a more common definition of pork: congressionally targeted expenditures of purely local or special interest. The bridges, along with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- who manipulated the earmark process to benefit clients -- played a large role in creating the current Washington backlash. "There's been a lot of public outrage over earmarks and government waste," said Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, an anti-tax, small-government group. "A fair amount of it is because of Alaska." TOPS FOR THE POPULATION
Alaska's 366 earmarks worth $705 million ranked only sixth nationally in 2005, according to figures released this month by the White House. But on a per capita basis -- money divided by population -- the state ranked first, at $1,064 per Alaskan. Examples range from a $26 million maintenance hangar at Elmendorf Air Force Base to a $300,000 grant for the Alaska Native Heritage Center. The ripple effect on the state's economy vies with that of the Permanent Fund dividend, according to University of Alaska Anchorage economist Scott Goldsmith: "They're on the same order of magnitude." In all, he said, one in three jobs in Alaska can be traced to federal spending, whether through earmarks or other forms of spending. That includes military spending -- which, at $183 million, made up the largest chunk of the 2005 earmarks. Some Alaskans say a fairer measure of the state's share of earmarks should be dollars per square mile. "Alaska has 663,267 square miles of lands and water that need maintenance, upgrades and access, as in highways, bridges, docks and remote transportation," said Paul Gardner, a Wasilla resident who has lived in Alaska since before statehood. Some question whether the federal government should subsidize economically marginal communities in remote parts of the Bush. But Alaska's status as a "new" developing state with a large Native population gives it its strongest claim to federal aid, particularly for rural health and sanitation programs. "I will stand on the (Senate) floor as long as it takes to explain that in some parts of Alaska we're still dealing with honey buckets, and by golly, this is not pork; it is meeting basic needs," Murkowski said. On that count, Alaska's delegation has some powerful Democrats on its side, including Rep. Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, who now chairs the Transportation Committee, a source of many of Young's past earmarks. Congressional earmarking, Oberstar said, "is particularly important for small and rural communities. ... It is irresponsible for the Bush administration to threaten these alternative funding sources." That kind of talk makes some observers wonder how far the new Democratic majority in Congress will go toward working with Bush to rein in earmarked spending. But earmark critics believe the momentum is on their side. "Earmarking is still alive, but there's going to be a lot more scrutiny," Ashdown said. "Instead of having steak, dessert and a martini, they're just going to have steak." For his part, Stevens said he's not done. "I'm not going to give up," he said. "I'm going to be sure that Alaska's needs are met by federal funds to the same extent as other states."
