Georgia's share of federal pork this year embarrassingly low. - Rep. Kingston, a member of the Appropriations Committee, is in a ticklish position.

I like to say that one man's pork is another man's bacon. But based on an AJC article by Tom Baxter reviewing federal figurers, Georgia was on a lien pork and bacon, getting precious little compared with other states.

You won't believe the numbers and statistics:

This year's "Pig Book," produced by Citizens Against Government Waste ("CAGW"), an anti-spending watchdog organization that has kept tabs on pork projects for 15 years, puts Georgia at 49th in the nation in pork per capita.

The state got only $14.80 in federal pork per citizen this year. Florida's got $21.84 per capita.

Even when raw numbers are compared, Georgia's $130.7 million in pork-barrel projects is modest by comparison with the $345.2 million raked in by neighboring Alabama, a state with half the population.

Neighboring South Carolina got $55.54 in pork per capita.

Georgia's lean pork diet puts Rep. Jack Kingston, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, in a ticklish position, writes Tom Baxter.

I reckon so.

"'You try to get reasonable projects to your district, things that are going to help promote jobs and business, but you don't go at it with the attitude of 'I can get it so I'm going to get it,' " said Kingston, a Savannah Republican.

"Generally, pork is something in somebody else's district," said former Democratic Rep. Buddy Darden, who sat on the House Appropriations Committee when the state didn't have a reputation as a federal dieter. "One person's pork is another person's legislative priority."

Georgia also fares poorly in a more comprehensive survey of federal spending, the Consolidated Federal Funds Report published by the U.S. Census Bureau. Last year, the state ranked 40th in per-capita share of overall federal spending from salaries and pensions for federal employees to special projects.

[David Williams, vice president of CAGW,] said the state has clearly lost influence in bringing in federal dollars since the departure of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1999.

In 2000, when overall pork spending counted by CAGW was $17.7 billion, Georgia had $139 million in pork projects. This year, when the national total is $27.3 billion, Georgia is down to $130.7 million.

"This is really the crux of the problem of pork-barrel spending. If you don't have influential appropriators in your state, you don't get the pork," he said.

According to CAGW, nationwide pork-barrel spending has skyrocketed over the past decade, from $10 billion when Gingrich took the speaker's gavel in 1995 to $27.3 billion this year.

In the past two years alone, the number of pork-barrel projects approved by Congress has risen nearly 50 percent.

Williams said his organization thought it could "turn out the lights and go home" when the GOP took over Congress, but the trend toward earmarking more and more federal projects has only accelerated.

"You go to an appropriations committee meeting, and you can't tell the Republicans from the Democrats," the spending watchdog said.