PELOSI’S PRESIDIO DEAL A REMINDER POWER HAS ITS PERKS
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has always brought home the pork to San Francisco. Her swan-song Build Back Better measure — a flood of hotoff-the-presses cash that will fuel inflation for every American — contains $200 million for the Presidio, a vast green space about a half-dozen blocks from the speaker’s home in one of the world’s most exclusive neighborhoods.
I don’t know if you can see the Presidio from her house, but I suspect we will see the park in a 100, or even a 1,000, TV spots by the time the 2022 elections roll around.
All but one House Democrat voted for this measure that included this going-away present for Pelosi. But $200 million for her neighborhood park? Isn’t that, well, excessive? Even by the storied pork-barreling standards of Congress?
The Presidio is already a beautiful place. It’s already a national park. It’s home to a national cemetery of heroes, including 35 recipients of the Medal of Honor.
It has already received vast infusions of federal cash and is patrolled by the U.S. Park Police. The act creating the Presidio Trust a quarter of a century ago provided that it should be self-sufficient after 15 years, which, of course has not worked out as planned. The Presidio Trust Act intended the park to support itself or be turned over to the General Services Administration, the agency that manages miscellaneous federal properties.
This, of course, didn’t happen. The original act has been amended four times, and the “reversion” language is still there, but of course it hasn’t reverted to the GSA. We have to conclude self-sufficiency was never in the cards; but does that justify another $200 million for Pelosi’s neighborhood park?
I’m not going to research the backgrounds of the seven-member governing board of the Trust. I salute them for their service. But let’s be honest, shall we? This is an appalling display of privilege and power.
I have to hand it to Pelosi. Power has its perks. In what is likely her final term in Congress, she has taken care of her own. I am in awe of this hubris.
Does the showering of largess on one park matter in the great big scheme of things? No. But it might be wrong to assume that Americans voting in every state next year — and particularly in the pivotal states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire, where Senate seats are up for grabs — are going to forget about the Presidio or how Democrats helped themselves to seconds when federal money was being handed out.
It will be political malpractice if voters in those states don’t ask themselves: What’s in our representatives’ and senators’ take-home bags? Did they get anything remotely like this in the Build Back Better bonanza?
The measure now moves to the Senate. The Presidio Trust manages 1,191 acres. Did Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly get $200 million for the 92,000-acre Saguaro National Park near his home in Tucson? How about Georgia Sen. Raphael G. Warnock? Before he was elected in the 2021 runoff, Warnock pastored Ebenezer Baptist Church (and continues as senior pastor at the church), which is within the 35-acre Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park. Did he get anything? Each senator controls the fate of this bill. Will any of them demand a plus-up for their neighborhood park, or demand the speaker’s bank robbery be stricken?
Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., at least was honest. “Speaker Pelosi gets maybe a little bit more, and some of the leaders get a little bit more on some of these bills,” he admitted during markup on the plan. “Well, the truth is, they should,” the Democrat then said. “If it weren’t for her working 24/7, and she does, to keep this place going, we wouldn’t be going. She does more for America than any other member, I would submit in this Congress, times 10. So, I support the proposal.”
Why did Pelosi insist on this? Short and speculative answer: She knows her time is up, and her majority is likely to get wiped out next November. She is a smart, tough pol — and this was her last
chance to put her lands in order.