[pmezard]

What mechanisms prevent the "pork-barreling and self-serving political advocacies" to take effect when re-instating some of these spendings?

[piker]

A great question! I can't think of anything that will. I think one idea would be to trim the budget broadly every year in a similar vein to align with receipts and let the people periodically decide anew what to fund.

[nhinck3]

So stability has zero value?

[like_any_other]

For pork-barreling, there is (or could be, it is not yet the law on the federal level) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_rule