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Gov't wastes our taxes with pork-barrel spending



 
 
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Old December 21st 03, 05:54 PM
John Galt
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Default Gov't wastes our taxes with pork-barrel spending

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGBL3RJP01.DTL

There's not enough money to care for wounded soldiers, but enough for
fedgov waste (and billions in aid for Israel).
Which sucker will be the last one to die for nothing in Iraq?

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Of polliwogs and pork
How some tiny tadpoles grew up to join ever-more-bloated list of
legislators' pet projects

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times Saturday, December 20, 2003


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Washington -- Like most members of Congress, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.,
tries to do what he can for the constituents back home.

So when the House passed a vast spending bill this month, Gibbons
wasted no time in announcing that he had secured millions of dollars
in funding for Nevada, including $6 million for a bus terminal, $2
million for a truck climbing lane and $1.6 million for drinking water
improvements.

But it was a more meager appropriation -- $225,000 to repair a
swimming pool in Sparks, his hometown -- that got Gibbons, 59, in hot
water. He admitted that he had sought the money because he had always
felt guilty about clogging the pool's drain with tadpoles when he was
10.

"Congressman Gibbons is using taxpayer dollars to repay his debt to
society," said Brian Reidl, a federal budget analyst at the Heritage
Foundation, a research organization, describing the pool money as his
"favorite pork story."

Gibbons, who defends the project as "very meritorious," is far from
the only lawmaker riding the pork gravy train this year.

The spending bill, called an omnibus, is stuffed with an estimated
7,000 special interest provisions, from $50 million for an indoor rain
forest in Iowa to $150,000 for a stop light and traffic improvements
in Briarcliff Manor,

N.Y.
If the Senate approves it, total spending on pet projects -- which has
more than doubled in the past five years -- will reach roughly $23
billion this year, the most ever, according to taxpayer watchdog
groups that track federal spending.

Every state -- indeed nearly every congressional district -- is the
recipient of one pork project or another. The measure includes
$200,000 for the University of Hawaii to produce a documentary on the
Kalahari bushmen, $220,000 to renovate a blueberry research facility
at the University of Maine and, in a provision Sen. Tom Daschle, the
Democratic leader, called "most ironic," $500,000 for the "Exercise in
Hard Choices" program at the University of Akron, which examines how
Congress makes budget decisions.

"It's worse than ever, and it's even more egregious because the
Republicans are in charge, and everyone thought that they would be
fiscally responsible," said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against
Government Waste, an advocacy group that named Gibbons "Porker of the
Month" for the swimming pool provision. "That's the big
disappointment."

Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the House Majority leader, said the $820
billion measure was filled with "sound, disciplined policies, funded
at reasonable, responsible levels."

As to pork, DeLay and other lawmakers prefer a different term:
earmarks. Such projects are typically neither subject to congressional
hearings nor competitively awarded through the federal bureaucracy's
grant-making process. Usually, they are requested by a single member
of Congress and serve only a single local or special interest.

One reason such earmarks flourish is that they help create support for
passing sometimes controversial appropriations bills; no lawmaker is
going to vote against a measure that helps his or her own district.
This year, earmarks were withheld from certain lawmakers who voted
against appropriations bills.

Among them was Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., who serves on the House
Appropriations Committee and voted against the spending bill covering
the departments of Labor, Health, Education and Human Services. After
the vote, she said, the subcommittee chairman responsible for the
measure, Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, informed her and others who voted
no that their earmarks would be denied.

"It's a shame," Lowey said, adding that she had lost several million
dollars worth of projects as a result. But she did get some other
earmarks, including the $150,000 for the stop light and traffic
improvements in Briarcliff Manor, which she said were necessary to
improve safety at a local school.

Lowey said she based her earmark requests on the needs outlined by
officials in her district. Gibbons, likewise, said the mayor of Sparks
had asked him for money to improve the swimming pool. It was only
then, nearly half a century after what people in his district have
called "the Polliwog Caper," that the congressman's long-held secret
came out.
 




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