Politicians easily disappoint us, but one of the most frustrating things is that they are allowed to repeat their improper actions.

One prime example of how old habits die hard is the way National Assembly members deliberate the state budget. They are keener on earmarking pork barrel projects than making sure taxpayers’ money is spent appropriately.

The problem starts with the deliberation of the government’s spending proposal by the parliamentary standing committees. Members of each committee, ruling and opposition, are bent on increasing the budget, mainly to allocate more central government funds to pork barrel projects in their home districts.

As one can imagine, things like cost-benefit analyses and feasibility studies are usually disregarded when lawmakers add spending plans to make their constituents happy.

The bigger problem lies in the later stage of the parliamentary deliberation, for which the Special Committee on Budget and Settlement of Accounts is responsible.

Members of the committee are flooded by fellow lawmakers’ requests to earmark funds for their respective election districts. So much so that this has led to the coining of the term “slip budget,” as lawmakers used to make such requests by sending in slips to the committee members even when it is in session. Now it has evolved into the term “KakaoTalk budget,” as more lawmakers opt to use the popular mobile messenger instead of writing on slips of paper.

Then comes the term “hotel budget,” which refers to the fact that in the final phase of the budget deliberation, a handful of members of the subcommittee for adjusting budget numbers get together for closed-door meetings at hotels. They say they do this in order to avoid lawmakers and government officials seeking favors.

It is at these hotel rooms that lawmakers from rival parties make secret deals on which allocations to cut and which to increase from the government-proposed spending plans.

As things stand, there is a good chance of this ― the state budget being swayed by slips and deals at hotel rooms ― being repeated this year.

Assembly officials said the combined sum of budget increases requested by the 13 standing committees amounts to 9.7 trillion won.

The Land and Transportation Committee topped the list, with it alone adding 3.4 trillion won to the government-proposed budget. This might be natural, given the committee handles major infrastructure projects like road construction, which are typical pork barrel projects.

Of them, 68.6 billion won was earmarked for projects in the committee chairman’s election district. Appropriations for the precincts of the ruling and main opposition parties’ chief representatives of the committee amounted to 24.9 billion won and 4.1 billion won, respectively.

Not surprisingly, the committee members were also considerate enough to allocate 2.6 billion won and 5.3 billion won respectively for the districts of the floor leaders of the ruling and the main opposition parties.

All this happened at a time when the shortage of welfare funds, especially for free school meals and free child care programs, is unsettling society and the nation is struggling with growing fiscal deficit and government debt. When it comes to the National Assembly, one should not say that old habits die hard. Rather, they never die at all.