Pork barrel

Typically, "pork" involves national funding for government programs whose economic or service benefits are concentrated in a particular area but whose costs are spread among all taxpayers.

Citizens Against Government Waste outlines seven criteria by which spending in the United States can be classified as "pork":[3] The term pork barrel politics originated in American English,[4] and usually refers to spending intended to benefit constituents of a politician in return for their political support, either in the form of campaign contributions or votes.

He claimed that the phrase originated in a pre-Civil War practice of giving enslaved people a barrel of salt pork as a reward and requiring them to compete among themselves to get their share of the handout.

[8] More generally, a barrel of salt pork was a common larder item in 19th-century households and could be used as a measure of the family's financial well-being.

For example, in his 1845 novel The Chainbearer, James Fenimore Cooper wrote: "I hold a family to be in a desperate way when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel.

[12] Pork-barrel projects, which differ from earmarks, are added to the federal budget by members of the appropriation committees of the United States Congress.

This allows the delivery of federal funds to the local district or state of the appropriation committee member, often accommodating major campaign contributors.