PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Given my years as a state government manager and a lobbyist, I know something about government budgeting in Oregon, which I have labeled “opaque.”

The federal government is even more difficult, if only because of its size. If we needed more information about an unreliable congressional budget process, we got some recently in a post by James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal.

Here is part of what he wrote under this headline:

‘We’re Talking About a Couple Billion Dollars’

Did Speaker Pelosi just admit that most infrastructure funding won’t fund infrastructure?

Freeman wrote this:

“A favorite Beltway pastime is to sell voters on the idea of building roads and bridges and then quietly allocate much of the funding to alternative energy start-ups and other economic marginalia. Usually, taxpayers have to wait years after the enactment of an infrastructure plan to learn just how little infrastructure they got for their money.

“But now it appears that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat from California, is doing taxpayers a modest favor by outlining the misspending to come from Washington’s next big deal.” [Which is a reference to an infrastructure that, at one point, appeared to be possible, but appears to have receded from view because Congress and President don’t know how to deal with each other.]

In a recent news conference, the Speaker, along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (the Democrat from New York) and other Democratic colleagues, committed to more “infrastructure” spending.

When Pelosi delved into the types of projects that might receive funding under her plan, she mentioned roads, bridges, mass transit projects and broadband Internet connections, as well as water and sewer systems and “all of the things that have enormous needs.”

Then Pelosi added, “We’re talking about a couple billion dollars.”

This, Freeman avers, “may sound like a refreshingly modest spending request by Beltway standards. The problem is that the Speaker and her Democrat colleagues have already agreed that the overall bill should cost one thousand times that amount.

“If Pelosi means what she says, the next infrastructure bill will be even less efficient at funding roads and bridges than the 2009 stimulus plan she enacted along with by Schumer and President Barack Obama.

A Huffington Post article in 2014 cited a report from the Obama White House as the source for data on how the more than $800 billion in stimulus money was spent:

The author of the Post article said this: “I was curious how much of the stimulus plan went to these transportation infrastructure projects. Toward the back of the report, there’s a chart that gives the number: $30 billion.

“First, how did the headline goal of the stimulus — rebuilding infrastructure — become a small footnote? Because, as Obama subsequently discovered, “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.

“The approval process for any significant project (a new road, or power line, or pipeline) approaches a decade, and often longer. An impenetrable legal swamp stands between America and a modern infrastructure.

“Second, if not infrastructure, where was most of the stimulus money spent?

The author found that, “among other boondoggles, clean energy subsidies received more than twice as much as transportation infrastructure and various benefit payments to individuals and state governments consumed much more.”

By discussing “a couple billion dollars” at her news conference, Pelosi now appears to be promising that far less than one percent of the next infrastructure plan will be funding infrastructure.”

This reminds me of what happens in Oregon government budgeting. I defy anyone to confirm that allocations end up funding the state purpose – no matter what legislative leaders say to the media.

Three things happen, as I have stated before – supplanting, sweeping and sojourning.

In the first case – “supplanting” — assume that “new money” from some source arrives in Oregon to fund a specific program. The money goes to that program, then “original money” that was intended for that purpose, is taken away. It’s “supplanting.”

In the second case – “sweeping” — money specifically targeted for one purpose (and taxpayers are advised of this “commitment”) – is “swept” away for another purpose, one that aligns with legislative leaders’ pet programs.

In the third case, which I label “sojourning” (in order to preserve alliteration), money goes to an intended purpose, but only stays there for a certain period of time, then is re-allocated elsewhere, again in line with the priorities of leaders – and with no confirmation to taxpayers.

What you end up with is an opaque process. No one knows where the money really is, so it becomes almost impossible, as well, to judge the effect of state spending.

Which is one reason why I am toying with voting in favor of referring a new, huge state business tax to voters – because I will have no way to confirm that all the new money goes to the intended purpose, which is to fund K-12 schools.

Government at all levels – local, state and federal – suffers from the same opacity.