Byrd Droppings

"They call me 'The Pork King,' they don't know how much I enjoy it." - Sen. Robert Byrd

In 2001, Senator Robert C. Byrd managed to claw $232 million in pork for West Virginia, or $128 for every single resident, using his privileged position as ranking chairman of the Appropriations Committee. After he secured $97 million in fiscal 1999, Byrd became the first person in CAGW's Congressional Pig Book history to obtain more than $1 billion in pork for his state. In honor of this fiscal incontinence, we dedicate this page to Senator Byrd.

The projects include a Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam (pictured above), Byrd Aerospace Tech. Center, Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (pictured left), Byrd Industrial Park, and various other projects proving how he really sees government coffers.

"Having the title [of Appropriations chairman] is fine, but not having the money is sobering."

Prior to the vote on President Bush's tax cut in 2001, Byrd made one last attempt to blackmail his fellow senators with pork from the well of the Senate: "Let me say to my colleagues, if you vote for this budget conference report, don't come to the appropriations watering hole. It is not that I would not love to help you, but you are going to make it impossible." He also sent his colleagues a letter reiterating his threats.

"One man's pork is another man's job. Pork has been good investment in West Virginia. You can look around and see what I've done."

"West Virginia has always had four friends," Byrd said, "God Almighty, Sears Roebuck, Carter's Liver Pills, and Robert C. Byrd."

"It is often overlooked that as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I was instrumental in assisting all of the states in the union with mass transit, highways, waterways, sewerage, education '' he said. "I worked to serve the national interests. Of course West Virginia, as one of the 50 states, benefited, but few states have needed more help."

"When I was a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates 51 years ago, West Virginia had four miles of divided highway,'' he said. "Four miles.'' Today the state has about 37,000 miles of highway.

Given CAGW's long history of chronicling and criticizing Byrd's prolific spending, CAGW was not surprised when he contemptuously referred to the group as "a bunch of peckerwoods" on National Public Radio in the summer of 2001.

Remember, this is the same man who said "you might as well slap my wife as take away my highway money." That must be especially true regarding the Robert C. Byrd Highway. In an interview with George magazine about loan guarantees for steel companies, Sen. Byrd claimed that "he has no apologies to make" to the American people for the more than $1 billion in taxpayer money he has wasted.

Although both columns use the list, you should find that there are also a great many other differences as well. Ann's column was written more than 3 years ago and it lists only had 17 entries and writer33's has 7 new ones to add.

Here's Ann's column from Feb 14th 2002.

(thanks for making me look it up, it was worth reading again.)

The Robert C. Byrd Bridge to Poverty

At a Senate Budget Committee hearing last week, Sen. Robert Byrd, who was named after a bridge in West Virginia, viciously attacked Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill for having made a success of himself. Claiming to speak for worthless layabouts, Byrd snippily informed O'Neill: "They're not CEOs of multibillion-dollar corporations. ... In time of need, they come to us, the people come to us."

Evidently what the people-in-need are asking for is a lot of federal projects named after Senator Byrd.

Some items funded by taxpayers -- but still somehow named after "Robert C. Byrd" -- are: The Robert C. Byrd Highway; the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam; the Robert C. Byrd Institute; the Robert C. Byrd Life Long Learning Center; the Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship Program; the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope; the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing; the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse; the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center; the Robert C. Byrd Academic and Technology Center; the Robert C. Byrd United Technical Center; the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building; the Robert C. Byrd Drive; the Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex; the Robert C. Byrd Library; the Robert C. Byrd Learning Resource Center; the Robert C. Byrd Rural Health Center.

And then it got late, and I had to stop researching. But it appears that every slab of concrete in West Virginia is named after Bob Byrd.

Really warming to his class-envy tirade, the King Tut of the Senate further informed O'Neill: "I haven't walked in any corporate boardrooms. I haven't had to turn any millions of dollars into trust accounts. I wish I had those millions of dollars." Instead, Byrd had to scrape by with billions of dollars forcibly extracted from the taxpayers to build grotesque banana republic tributes to himself.

At least the money O'Neill "turn(ed) into trust accounts" came from his own pocket. Coincidentally, the money Byrd turned into eponymous monuments also came from O'Neill's pocket. A humble display of gratitude might have been more appropriate.

An astonished O'Neill responded to the harangue: "I started my life in a house without water or electricity. So I don't cede to you the high moral ground of not knowing what life is like in a ditch."

And then the hearing spun totally out of control as Senator Tut redoubled his own sob story: "Well, Mr. Secretary, I lived in a house without electricity, too, no running water, no telephone, a little wooden outhouse." (Though Byrd was manifestly enamored of these fascinating particulars of his life story, he unaccountably skipped the part about his youthful membership in the Ku Klux Klan.)

When did a lack of money and accomplishment become a mark of virtue? Some rich people may be swine, but so are some poor people. A lot of rich people work harder, are more creative, and are a lot nicer than the poor. Paul O'Neill was never in the Klan. Paul O'Neill never filched taxpayers' hard-earned money to build a vast complex of shrines to himself.

More perplexingly, when did a scoundrel whose only source of capital comes from other people's paychecks assume the "high ground" over a rich man who dispersed paychecks? O'Neill is rich, I'm not, oh well. At least he didn't dip into my earnings.

Every society must have concentrations of wealth in order to build and create. Even the Soviet Union of beloved memory had concentrations of wealth -- but it was in the government, rather than in corporations. It's called capital. Capital is needed to launch society's most important projects -- factories, inventions, bridges, skyscrapers and telescopes named after Bob Byrd.

O'Neill's concentration of money came to him through the voluntary decisions of investors and consumers. Byrd's far larger concentration of money came to him by force. Send in half your paycheck to the government or go to jail.

The specious core of the liberal mantra on tax cuts -- "tax cuts for the rich" -- is that unless taxes are cut across the board, it never happens. As loaded Hollywood liberals are always reminding us, they don't "need" a tax cut. The rich we shall always have with us, kind of like the poor. At least conservatives defend the right of middle-class people to keep their money, too.

The only rich people deserving of malice are rich liberals who express bemusement at the non-rich's desire for a tax cut. They want the middle class to pay more in taxes and use the lumpen poor as a battering ram against these hated, acquisitive, coupon-clipping climbers.

Despite his maudlin self-flattery, Robert Byrd and the rest of his party don't resent the rich on behalf of the poor. They resent the rich on behalf of the government. There may still be a toilet in West Virginia that is not yet named for Bob Byrd.

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