The Nation Builder

"Let's dig this ditch for Mike!" shouted Mississippi's John Bell Williams, and minutes later, a mighty chorus of "ayes" echoed through the House chamber. The "ditch" is a projected 120-mile waterway that will connect Lake Erie with the Ohio River at a cost estimated as high as $3 billion. The project has a flock of critics. But its sponsor is Ohio Democrat Mike Kirwan, 79, the Congressman responsible each year for doling out some $4 billion in pork-barrel projects to his colleagues, and most House members would sooner abandon Panama than damn Kirwan's canal.

Last week Kirwan's annual public-works appropriations bill sailed through the House on a 354-to-25 vote. Not a dollar was put into or subtracted from the legislation as it was reported out by his Subcommittee on Public Works Appropriations. Since "Big Mike" likes to keep all House members happy, every state had at least one slice of bacon. But Kirwan was undisguisedly most elated about his own project. "This is going to be the greatest canal," he bragged, "in the history of mankind."

Roughhewn, Pennsylvania-born Michael Joseph Kirwan dropped out of school after the third grade and followed his coal miner father into the pits. Later, he worked on oil gushers, farms and railroads.

The Tank. In 1937, at the age of 50, Kirwan came to Washington from Youngstown, elected to the congressional seat once held by Presidents James Garfield and William McKinley. Despite his double negatives and other grammar gaps, he was re-elected 14 times, thereby earning enough seniority on the Appropriations Committee to become the House's undisputed Prince of Pork. Kirwan is never loath to combat a political foe by lidding his barrel. Four years ago, when Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse voted against a $10 million aquarium for the District of Columbia--a pet Kirwan project--Mike simply lopped four Oregon projects out of his pork bill. Morse eventually backed down. "Mike's Fish Tank" will be built, and Oregon got back its appropriations.

Mike scrupulously takes care of his friends on both sides of the aisle (though every project in his bill must satisfy a cost-benefits formula established by the Army Corps of Engineers). His hackles rise at any suggestion that his subcommittee ever approves a boondoggle: "Name one project that won't stand the acid," he challenges. Kirwan views his work as nation building. "Unfortunately, men are selfish, they are just interested in taking care of themselves," he says. "We had better wake up and do what is necessary to preserve, protect and develop America."

As Mike sees it, one certain way to preserve America is to elect Democrats. He has been chairman of the Democrat ic Congressional Campaign Committee for 18 years, during which he has doled out some $7,000,000 among Democratic candidates.

For their part, canny Congressmen make doubly sure of preserving and developing their own districts by selling tickets to Big Mike's fund-raising dinners, digging his ditch and seeing to it that they are present and accounted for each year when his appropriations bill comes to the floor.

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