Everybody knows much of the spending that Congress authorizes is full of pork, that wasteful spending on a Congressman’s pet projects that’s useless for everyone else, but gets them votes in their home districts even as the rest of us have to pay for the garbage. But how does all that pork get in there?

The answer comes today from longtime Senate staffer Winslow Wheeler, now on staff at the Center for Defense Information.

It turns out, at least in the case of military pork, that the pork is attached to the Joint Explanatory Statement that accompanies the bill as it makes its way through Congress. Consider this one (PDF) for instance.

According to Wheeler, “there are 2,966 examples [or pork] costing about $11.1 billion” in the JES. Some are baldly offensive, like the $500,000 for the “Westchester County World Trade Center Memorial,” or the $850,000 for the “Des Moines Memorial Park and Education Center.” But most sound perfectly legitimate — at least from their titles. Soldiers in the mountains of Afghanistan could very well use $4 million worth of “fleece insulated liners.” The “Walter Reed Amputee Center” might have a need for an extra $5.5 million, sure.

Regardless, Wheeler argues, they’re still pork. — Defense Tech

Read the three-part tutorial: Pork: Where is it?, Pork: What is it?, Pork: How to get rid of it.