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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? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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