Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, December 15th, 2006. I'm your host Anastasia Glova.

Our voter is finally rejecting pork spending with the defeat of Representative Henry Bonilla, a member of the House Appropriations Committee in a runoff election on Tuesday, the possibility is not out of the question.

Director of Government Affairs Brandon Arnold explains. Yet another member of the House Appropriations Committee,

Representative Henry Bonilla, lost his seat this week.

Yes, that's right. Henry Bonilla lost. That means that five appropriators, five incumbent appropriators who are seeking

re-election, loss in the November elections.

And only 22 Republican incumbents lost overall.

So that's a pretty hefty percentage of the

people who lost. Why are voters rejecting appropriations committee members

despite all the pork money that they channel towards their constituents

districts? Well it's tough to say, and especially with such a small sample size, it's tough to pinpoint an exact reason.

But it certainly raises some red flags to see so many appropriators go down, because I think as you allude to the appropriations

committee is well known for sending just absolutely tons of pork barrel

spending to the districts of not only Appropriations Committee members, but especially to Appropriations

Committee members who are facing some tough re-election races.

So there's a couple of things to pull out of that. Perhaps voters are getting sick of this

appropriations process. Perhaps because the appropriations issues and ethical problems

are often go hand in hand with one another. There may be some spillover from

some of the other ethical lapses that we've seen in Congress.

Do you think voters are affected by the Duke Cunningham scandal? Well, perhaps the Duke Cunningham scandal really blew the lid off the appropriations

process as being a favor factory.

A lot of people knew about that already, especially inside the Beltwayway but that was just such a glaring

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