These days, as Congress is looking to trim unnecessary federal spending, you would think that a project like the James Webb Space Telescope -- $1.5 billion over budget and plagued by problems and delays -- would need to go. A House Appropriations subcommittee thinks so and defunded it, but this move is encountering opposition from Rep. Steny Hoyer. Even though Rep. Hoyer has said he thinks we need to cut spending, it appears he doesn’t think any spending needs to be cut if it benefits his own district.

As the Baltimore Sun reported, when the House subcommittee cut funding for this problem-plagued telescope, Hoyer fired off a letter pleading that the full Appropriations Committee restore its funding. His pleas to restore the 5^th Distric’s pork stand in contrast to his earlier budget rhetoric. In May, Rep. Hoyer made these remarks:

Our fiscal challenge is so large that both parties are going to have to give up some of the ideology and take some hard steps that they don’t especially like. The biggest distinction in Congress right now is between those who are willing to do that, and those who are so stuck in their old ways of thinking that they won’t budge.

At the time he also said, “I believe that we have to spend less money…”

Of course, when it comes to cutting spending that affects his district, Mr. Hoyer doesn’t want to spend less money and doesn’t want to “take some hard steps.” Perhaps he’s “so stuck in [his] old ways of thinking that [he] won’t budge.”

This kind of thing is why it is so hard to cut spending in Washington. Almost without fail, every member of Congress is an advocate for his or her district (or state, if one is in the Senate), not the wider national interest. That is understandable, given the fact that voters in a district or state vote for Congress. If you don’t support the interests of a district or state, then you may not have another term in Congress.

As someone who used to work in the Senate, I saw this every day of my tenure there. Did the U.S. military really need that weapons system? It didn’t matter, since a weapons system would have been a fierce champion of whatever Congressman represented the district where the weapons system was made. Was a certain Air Force base necessary for national defense? That question wasn’t important to the Congressmen in whose district the base was located.

Ultimately, though, one can’t blame the members of Congress for this. They are only as good as the people who elect them. If the voters reward statesmen with their votes, then Congress will be full of statesmen. If voters continue re-electing Congressmen whose only criteria for judging what the federal government should fund is whether the project is located within that Congressman’s district, then that’s what we’ll get.

When voters stand up to elected officials and demand fiscal responsibility, even when that fiscal responsibility means less government pork for these voters, then maybe we’ll see our nation’s budget problems start being fixed. Until we do, then we’ll see people like Rep. Hoyer in D.C., claiming to want a reduction in federal spending but vociferously opposing any spending cuts that affect their own district.