pork barrel
12
7.9
- noun
- /pɔrk ˈbɛrəl/
- Jargon
:
gasto clientelar
- In effect, he is being forced to abandon the high road of strategy for the low road of pork-barrel politics.
- pork barrel politics
- pork barrel spending
Examples
-
Senator Nunn and colleagues from both parties on the Armed Services Committee severely criticized appropriators and other senators for enacting special interest "pork barrel" measures at a time when DoD military and civilian staffing and force structure were being reduced.
Academic text (1993) -
As a result, a supplemental appropriation is required annually, and it becomes a vehicle for more pork-barrel projects.
Academic text (1990) -
I want a president who is against new legislation from Congress filled with pork barrel spending.
Blog text (5) -
And good old-fashioned pork barrel politics go on.
Academic text (1994) -
Dubya gave us the conservative, pork-barrel welfare state, and we all know how well that one went down with the voters.
Blog text (15) -
Much will also depend on whether homeland security becomes ravaged by pork-barrel politics.
Academic text (2004) -
For a long time, the focus has been on eliminating government waste, "pork barrel" projects, and earmarks.
Blog text (5) -
In another attack on pork-barrel spending, the Confederate Constitution gave the President a line-item veto.
Blog text (23) -
Because U.S. security seems so easily purchased, the defense budget has largely become a pork barrel for defense contractors, communities near military bases, reservists, some labor unions, and the officer corps.
Academic text (1999) -
The senator promised to avoid any pork barrel projects that do not benefit the local community.
Synonyms
59
8.2
Government money given to a politician's local area to win support
1
9.1
Using government money to pay for local projects to please voters
A government project that people think wastes money, often in a spending bill
A government plan to help the economy that wastes a lot of money
Surface Forms
Morphology
pork + barrel
The literal meanings of 'pork' (a meat) and 'barrel' (a container) give no clear clue to the political sense of allocating government funds to local projects; the phrase is a culturally specific political metaphor. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words but has not seen the term before would be unlikely to infer the idiomatic meaning, so it is not compositionally transparent.
Etymology
Pork barrel may come from old times when a barrel of pork was a valuable local gift and politicians promised this kind of small, visible benefit to win support. So, pork barrel now means using government money for local projects mainly 'to please voters' rather than for the public good.