For several years I devoted a great deal of time and effort to Maine projects. One of them was in Brunswick, for many years the daily scene of Maine’s worst traffic jam. In the late afternoon thousands of day-shift workers from the Bath Iron Works got into their cars to drive home, as did thousands of military and civilian employees of the Brunswick Naval Air Station, located just a few miles away. And they all came together with the always heavy traffic on U.S. Route 1, a busy summer tourism route, which passes through Brunswick and Bath. On the many occasions I visited the area, or any town within a radius of thirty miles, people expressed concern, frustration, even anger over the daily gridlock. After years of debate and study, state and federal officials came up with a plan to deal with the problem: it included a bypass highway around Brunswick and new approaches and ultimately a new bridge in Bath to replace the old structure that crossed the Kennebec River there. The cost of the bypass was estimated at $15 million and improvements for the Bath bridge at $10 million.
I lost count of the many meetings members of my staff and I had with other members of the Senate committee and relevant House members on this project. I was assisted by Grace Reef, an able and hardworking member of my staff who never took no for an answer. Her determination and skill were evident by the time she was twelve years old. A skilled baseball player, she was denied the opportunity to play in the Little League in her hometown of Portland. She sued the national organization, won, and became the first girl ever to play in the Little League.21 She was as tenacious and successful on the Brunswick bypass. It was a long and difficult struggle, but by 1987 the project was included in the Senate transportation bill. It was, however, not included in the House bill, so Grace and I had to work very hard at the conference to keep it in.
During the process the Reagan administration expressed opposition to funding for mass transit and to some of the projects in the bill. At one meeting with some of the conferees, an administration official identified a list of projects the president wanted deleted from the bill. We had no way of knowing how much involvement, if any, the president himself had in the details. I thought it unlikely. To my dismay Brunswick was on their hit list, as were many of the projects proposed by congressional leaders. Then an eagle-eyed congressional staff member noted that under the administration proposal most of the projects in the president’s home state of California remained in the bill. The official was asked to explain why the projects in our states were unacceptable to the president, but those in California remained in the bill. In response he said, with a straight face, “We approve those we believe to be investments in our nation’s future.”
After much wrangling we reached a compromise, but because of continuing disagreement over other provisions, including mass transit funding, the president vetoed the bill when it reached his desk. At first we failed by one vote to override it, but a second try succeeded. Grace and I had to do another round of meetings but were able to keep Brunswick in, and I heaved a huge sigh of relief when the bill became law.
Not long afterward I was invited to speak to a business group in Brunswick. I accepted gladly, eager to get credit for my work on the bypass. In the question-and-answer period after my speech, one man delivered a sharp denunciation of “out-of-control pork-barrel” spending by the Congress. When he finished I asked him if he considered the Brunswick Bypass to be “out-of-control pork-barrel” spending. “No,” he replied. He calmly cited the important work on navy ships at the Bath shipyard and the Atlantic Ocean submarine patrols by navy planes from the Brunswick Naval Air Station, and concluded by describing the $15 million to be spent on the bypass as “an investment in our nation’s future.” From California to Maine the refrain is the same: My project is an investment in our nation’s future. Yours is pork.
Among other large projects we were able to keep in the bill were two of great immediate significance to Maine: full funding for a new bridge over the Fore River connecting Portland and South Portland and for a new bridge over the Kennebec River connecting Waterville and Winslow. Both bridges were subsequently constructed and have had a positive effect on the communities and the state as a whole.
There was a smaller project of less immediate significance that has had an even larger impact on the state. Passenger rail service to Maine was discontinued more than fifty years ago. By the time I got to the Senate Maine was one of only two of the forty-eight states in the continental United States without such service. Wayne Davis, a Maine man with large vision and uncommon energy, led an effort by a coalition of Maine groups and individuals seeking to restore passenger service. I had worked with and gotten to know Graham Claytor, a resourceful executive who was then running Amtrak. Grace Reef and another talented young member of my staff, Sandy Brown, were able to gain inclusion of funding for the first in a series of feasibility studies, all of which were positive and promising. Claytor then authorized the track improvements and running equipment (all of it used but clean and functional), and passenger rail service was restored. The results have been spectacular, exceeding even the most optimistic projections. Today the Amtrak Downeaster carries thousands of passengers each day from Portland to Boston and back, and service has been extended north from Portland to Brunswick.
It is undeniable that the legislative process was later abused. The number of projects in the highway and other bills rose from dozens to hundreds to thousands in a few decades. The type of project expanded with the number and the costs, and the “earmark” era resulted. Yet it also is undeniable that many of the projects were appropriate, even necessary. No one has yet been able to figure out how to objectively decide which is appropriate and which is not in a society in which “an investment in our nation’s future” is widely used to justify a project for my state but not for yours. Perhaps the most useful approach would be to subject each project to a separate vote in the House and Senate; while that method would itself be imperfect, at least it would require the approval, out in the open, of a majority of members of each house of Congress for each project.