Posted on 12/12/2003 9:29:27 PM PST by Stew Padasso
Posted on Fri, Dec. 12, 2003
Congressional porkfest: a pig in a poke
By Bronwyn Lance Chester VIRGINIAN-PILOT
It's a spending lollapalooza these days on Capitol Hill.
Like students who've procrastinated all semester in favor of quaffing brews and scarfing pizza, Congress recently pulled the equivalent of an all-nighter, turning in seven of its 13 spending bills three months late in a single, messy 1,448-page binder.
And just like students loose at the mall with Daddy's Visa card, the feel-good spending spree is going to cause a mighty shock when the bills come due. Give Congress an F in economics and effort.
It's certainly earned an A in shamelessness.
The omnibus bill, passed by the House and awaiting a Senate vote, contains a jaw-dropping $373 billion worth of goodies.
Any lawmaker who says he's read the entire foot-high bill is either lying or delusional. But a flip through its pages reveals a spending shindig likely to set a record for pork-barrel waste of tax dollars.
Someone stop them before they vote again.
Lowlights include $50 million to build an indoor tropical rainforest in Coralville, Iowa. By my calculations, for 50 million greenbacks, we'd come out ahead by buying each of Coralville's 17,000 citizens three round-trip plane tickets to Brazil to see a real rainforest. Then taxpayers could avoid having to cough up the rest of the dough for a dubious project expected to eventually cost $225 million.
Then there's the swimming pool in Sparks, Nev. Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons asked his colleagues for $225,000 to repair a pool that he and his friends clogged with tadpoles in the 1950s. Seems the drains haven't worked properly since.
"I have an enormous guilty conscience for putting frogs in the swimming pool when I was about 10 years old," Gibbons has said. And obviously no guilt whatsoever about asking us to pay for it.
It's no coincidence that Alaska, home of Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, makes out like a bandit, including $447,000 for "halibut data collection" and $200,000 for the city of North Pole for "recreational improvements."
What improvements? Hop on your sled and have fun.
Then there's $2 million for kiddie golf in St. Augustine, Fla., and $1.8 million for the Appalachian fruit laboratory in West Virginia. I could continue, but you get the point. Budget dust adds up.
"This omnibus represents the values of discipline, innovation and conviction we all treasure," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Egads. Tom needs to get out more.
It's disquieting that this nose-in-the-trough behavior is taking place when Republicans, supposedly the party of small government and fiscal prudence, control the White House and Congress.
"One would expect the trains to at least run on time," said Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste.
But until the White House issues a credible veto threat in an effort to cut spending, such recklessness will only continue.
Trying to make themselves heard over the oinks and squeals, fiscally conservative groups, including Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government Waste, National Taxpayers Union and the Heritage Foundation held a joint press conference Monday to decry the spending spree.
Of course, none of this takes into account that 10-year $400 billion turkey, the Medicare bill, projected by the Congressional Budget Office to cost as much as $2 trillion in the following decade. Or the $166 billion in the two Iraq and Afghanistan spending bills.
If Ronald Reagan could cut nondefense discretionary spending by 13.5 percent with a Democratic Congress - that's according to the libertarian CATO Institute, by the way - then President Bush has little excuse for a 20.8-percent rise in the same category on his watch.
The cure for Congress' compulsive spending lies in pressure from taxpayers, warnings like the one last week from venerable Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs & Co., and, ultimately, the ballot box.
Last week, President Bush appointed James Baker as special envoy to help solve Iraq's problem of mounting debts. Perhaps Mr. Baker would be good enough to swing by Capitol Hill on his way out.
Amen, brother.
Many of these soldiers will come home, the yellow ribbons will fade and be cast to the wind, they will suffer as many of our Vietnam vets did and do...and many will become expats...I believe I may join them.
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