The day after Thanksgiving, Washington budget hawks are talking turkey about cutting the federal budget. And also -- lobster.

In 2008, Congress appropriated $188,000 for the Lobster Institute, an industry-backed organization run by the University of Maine. The government funding was earmarked by Maine’s members of Congress, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.

“Proudly working with and serving the lobster industry from New York to Newfoundland since 1987, the core of the Lobster Institute mission is to sustain both the lobster resource and a viable lobster fishery… through conservation, outreach, research and education,” the institute says on its Web site, www.LobsterInstitute.org.

While the institute may help the lobster industry prosper and keep consumers of the crustacean well supplied, federal budget cops say it is one high-profile piece of pork-barrel spending that President-elect Obama will have to cut if he and his economic advisors are serious about bringing fiscal discipline to Washington, D.C. Government spending will be under the microscope more than ever after Mr. Obama takes office in January—the budget deficit for fiscal 2008 clocked in at a record $455 billion and, with some politicians looking for a stimulus package next year of $500 billion or more, the deficit for fiscal 2009 could hit $1 trillion.

“We are going to go through our federal budget, as I promised during the campaign, page by page, line by line, eliminating those programs we don’t need and insisting on those we do need operate in a sensible cost effective way,” Mr. Obama said on Tuesday, when he announced his choice for budget director, Peter Orszag, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Making the pledge is easy—every politician does. But as veterans of Washington’s budget wars know, cutting is not.

“It's so easy to add a project, one of these pork barrel projects, to the budget,” said David Williams, vice president of policy for Citizens Against Government Waste. “It is so difficult to take it out. Once it gets in there, it is virtually impossible to yank it out.”

Williams is particularly steamed about the funding for the Lobster Institute, which operates a lobster Web cam at www.thelobstercam.com.

“The Lobster Institute has an underwater camera which allows the viewer to see lobsters in their natural environment--but not at night or when the water is murky, because they don't get as good a reception,” Williams said. “And another project by the Lobster Institute is they’re using lobster meat for dog food. They're using that for dog biscuits now. This is what the American taxpayer is paying for--the ‘Lobster Institute for Better Dog Food.’ This is ridiculous.”

The officials at the Lobster Institute did not immediately respond to request for comment. But they and Maine lawmakers defended the institute’s federal appropriation in a recent article in the Bangor Daily News, posted to the website of Sen. Tom Colburn, R-OK, a critic of government spending.

Among other things, the institute’s director, Robert Bayer, told the newspaper that the earmark went to fund lobster health research, which he said is vital to the lobster industry and important to consumers.

"Lobsters get sick just like any other animal, and sometimes what they get sick from kills them," Bayer told the newspaper. "Some of these health issues are from pollutants that come from us. We want to know what those health issues are and how we can mitigate them."

Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican, told the newspaper, “While I did not in fact make this specific request…the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine seeks to enhance our understanding of the impact of the environment on this vital resource, as well as on food safety…These objectives, which the appropriation would support, are important, given there’s no question our lobster industry is vital to the economy of Maine."

Maine Congressman Mike Michaud, a Democrat, told the Daily News, "I will continue to fight against government waste and to make sure that our tax dollars are spent wisely…At the same time, I will also continue to advocate for appropriate federal investments in high-priority needs in Maine." There are more than 5,800 lobstermen in Maine, and Maine supplied 70% of the country’s lobsters in 2006, Michaud’s office told the newspaper.

The Maine lawmakers’ defense of the federal cash for lobster research foreshadows the challenge President-elect Obama and his budget team face next year. It is always the case that one lawmaker’s pork project is another’s job supporter or creator. But Obama faces even bigger problems: Once elections in two Senate races are settled in the next few weeks, Senate Democrats may end up one or two votes shy of the 60 votes they need under Senate rules to end debate on most legislative proposals. (Once the Senate approves ending debate, it can move legislation to votes on passage, which requires a simple majority.) Because his party does not have the 60 votes necessary for complete control of the Senate, Mr. Obama will need to attract Republican votes to move his agenda forward, probably often. That will give some Republicans – likely moderates like Sen. Snowe – the power to extract support from Mr. Obama for their legislative priorities—like funding for some obscure research institute. And given the tightness of the Democrat’s vote margin in the Senate, many Democrats will have that leverage with Mr. Obama as well.

Longer term, Mr. Obama biggest challenge in controlling government spending may be – himself. During his campaign, Mr. Obama proposed new spending priorities and proposals that could add trillions to the federal budget over the next decade. An analysis of Mr. Obama’s tax proposals in November by the Tax Policy Institute found that his tax proposals will add at least $2.9 trillion to the national debt by 2018, if enacted--even after allowing President Bush’s tax cuts for wealthier households to expire in 2010, as Mr. Obama pledged. One reason for the increase is Mr. Obama’s plan to keep and expand tax breaks for the middle class; another is his proposal to create a new government-sponsored health care plan that includes tax provisions. The center’s analysis is here: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/1001223_taxes.pdf.

“He (also) has said he wants huge infrastructure investments in this country,” says Williams of Citizens Against Government Waste. “He wants to spend money on bridges, roads, all these other programs. So how are you gonna say no to a Congress that comes to you with a bill with all these pork barrel projects that are roads, that are bridges. It's government spending (that), when you've said this is what you believe as a person, as a politician, is going to help the country. So he has a bit of a problem here. How is he going to cut earmarks while following through with his Keynesian policies?"

But Mr. Obama also proposed some significant savings in government spending that the Tax Policy Center’s analysis doesn’t take into account, as they do not involve tax proposals. Among other things, Mr. Obama wants to end the war in Iraq. It currently costs taxpayers about $10 billion a month. Most of the president-elect’s proposals can be found at his campaign website, at http://origin.barackobama.com/issues.

In an analysis called “Prime Cuts,” CAGW suggests changes that could save $270 billion in one year -- and $1.9 trillion over five years -- by reforming or deleting 700 government programs without (it claims) hurting the most vital government services. The 140-page document tees up some major programs for review and cuts – including the ones that will be the biggest headaches for Mr. Obama and his successors—the exploding government entitlement programs, Medicare and Social Security. Among other things, CAGW says policymakers could repeal highway earmarks, for a savings of $5 billion in the first year and $25 billion over five years, and eliminate the government subsidy for ethanol, which would save $4 billion in year one and $20 billion over five years. A PDF of “Prime Cuts” is here.

Click here to view "Prime Cuts" database

Click here to view "Prime Cuts" sources

“Let's talk about Medicare--$10-11 billion dollars a year in improper payments,” says CAGW’s Williams. “These are payments made to providers, to doctors, that are improper, that are more than they should be. And if you get rid of these improper payments, you're not hurting the health care of seniors. You're not affecting that. What you're doing is you're getting rid of the bad actors in Medicare. You're getting rid of the waste, fraud and abuse. So this is a way to make the government a lot more efficient without effecting the services that are being delivered to our senior citizens.”

CAGW also publishes an annual “Pig Book” on pork barrel spending and says Mr. Obama could easily start with this list. The 2008 edition identifies 11,610 projects at a cost of $17.2 billion for fiscal 2008, including the Lobster Institute funding, $49,000 for National Mule and Packers Museum in California and $172,782 for National Wild Turkey Federation in South Carolina. The organization defines a "pork” project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose, in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. A copy of the 2008 Pig Book is here:
http://www.cagw.org/site/DocServer/CAGW-Pig_Book_08.pdf?docID=3001.

The organization notes that both the legislative and executive branches of the government regularly propose ways to balance the budget. In 2007, the Congressional Budget Office suggested dozens of ways Congress could work to balance the federal budget by both cutting spending -- and raising revenues. For example, the CBO report says ending NASA’s shuttle program could save taxpayers more than $50 billion between 2008 to 2017. It also says increasing income taxes by one percentage point for all taxpayers could raise $445 billion over the same period. The CBO report can be found at
https://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/78xx/doc7821/02-23-BudgetOptions.pdf. The CBO director at the time the report was written? None other than the man Mr. Obama tapped this week to direct the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag.

The Bush Administration has also proposed its own spending reforms. For 2009, its recommendations are at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/pdf/apers/proposals.pdf.