Presidential Pork: White House Influence over the Distribution of Federal Grants

8: Conclusions and Implications

8 Conclusions and Implications Presidents are election-driven individuals who use the formal and informal tools of their office to advance their electoral interests. They engage in a basic, strategic, and widely used behavior among elected officials: pork barrel politics. Presidents wield extensive spending authority and direct federal dollars to swing states in advance of elections as swing states represent a critical constituency that decides whether candidates win or lose presidential elections. Discretionary spending power serves incumbent presidents as a campaign tool to further their reelection efforts and the efforts of their same-party successor. Presidents have the motive, means, and opportunity to engage in pork barrel politics. However, political scientists often view such behavior as beneath or beyond the president—as a tool reserved for legislative actors. Because of Congress’s role as chief appropriator and members’ manageable constituencies, the literature focuses on their desire and ability to target funds in strategic ways. In a similar way, presidents capitalize on delegated spending power to motivate a broad bureaucracy to be responsive to their interests, including electoral interests. White House officials, the Office of Management and Budget , and political appointees serve as an army of responsive surrogates using their leadership positions to ensure that policy outcomes reflect presidential preferences. These political actors use a host of tools and mechanisms to help satisfy the president’s penchant for pork. These include direct efforts such as distributive intervention, budgetary oversight, and personnel politicization as well as informal means such as the manipulation of funding criteria, strategic design of grant programs, and the application of political pressure. What results is a complex system of political tools that empower presidents to behave in electorally strategic ways. 189 08-2520-6 ch8.indd 189 1/8/14 3:58 PM 190 conclusions and implications This book illustrates the comprehensive and successful efforts that presidents and their surrogates mount in order to achieve electorally strategic policy responsiveness from their administrations. I offer two claims that deviate from standard research on the presidency. First, presidents are primarily election-driven individuals. This view challenges arguments that such motives are ancillary. It also extends research on presidential elections and the permanent campaign to include an examination of the effects of electoral interests on public policy. Second, presidents are able to influence and determine policy even at the micro-level more effectively than Congress can. This perspective insists on a reexamination of theories of presidential behavior and demonstrates the significant distributional consequences when presidential electoral interests drive policy administration. What We Know: The Effects of Electorally Strategic Policymaking It is well understood among the Washington establishment that presidential spending authority is a critical power that allows the White House to generate policy that will deliver political and electoral benefits to the president. Discretionary grants—totaling about $100 billion annually—provide an ideal context for testing theories of presidential policymaking and electoral behavior. I capitalize on this area of federal spending to show that presidential electoral preferences substantially influence both where and when these funds are distributed. This book illustrates the myriad ways in which presidents—even though they serve as head of a large, diverse bureaucracy—effectively influence policy at the micro level, particularly in the area of distributive policy. Straightforward , well-publicized, easily interpreted presidential electoral preferences are easily conveyed throughout the bureaucracy. With respect to distributive policy , it is simple to communicate preferences about which key states should be targeted. Presidents can use political appointees effectively in a wide variety of capacities. The president’s handpicked surrogates have numerous ways to influence fund distribution for political or electoral gain. These include strategically structuring decisionmaking, creating grant criteria, applying political pressure, and controlling the information environment surrounding civil servants. This book shows that presidents also influence micro-level policymaking by strategically selecting executive branch personnel—both appointed and career staff. The findings also highlight a critical aspect of these presidential efforts. Staffing decisions are particularly sensitive to presidential 08-2520-6 ch8.indd 190 1/8/14 3:58 PM conclusions and implications 191 preferences for positions that have distributive authority—power with electoral implications. Presidents and their appointees are broadly effective at using their spending authority and power over bureaucratic processes to engage in pork barrel politics. However, this electorally strategic policy control is not uniform across the executive branch. Instead, specific institutional designs, such as insulated independence and politicization, condition presidential control and policy responsiveness...