Tight budget has room for special projects (Pork-o-Rama Lives!!!)

Monterey Herald ^ | 11/23/04 | Sharon Theimer - AP

[NormsRevenge]

'No Pork Project Left Behind' :-\

[NormsRevenge]

Let the braggin' begin.

[RockinRight]

W, see that pen on your desk...it's a VETO pen. Try it out this time.

[HappyCapitalist]

Didn't congress pass the line item veto power during the Clinton administration? This is the situation where the president needs to use it very liberally.

[lainie]

Roadmap to Pork

Ohio Reps. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a Democrat, and Steven LaTourette, a Republican, boasted about the $350,000 for music education programs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Nicole Williams, a spokeswoman for Tubbs Jones, said another lawmaker requested the funding but Tubbs Jones supported it. With a deficit in Cleveland's public school system and music education among the programs being cut, the museum funding could benefit the city as a whole, Williams said.

That's just swell. Now the taxpayers get to fund the left's pet projects and Springsteen & Moby can sit back and giggle.

[ken5050]

You know..there is ONE way to stop all of this...in its tracks..AND garner lots of popular support...Rememebr last budget cycle..when McCain spend hours reading all these little projects during several Senate speeches..?<P.
I'm gonna use round numbers here..to make the point....assume there is $90 billion worth of pork, and assume that there are 150 million American taxpaying units....McCain could object to the budget being brought up for a vote....which could be stopped by invoking cloture..but at the same time he could introduce a bill calling for a tax rebate to every taxpayer unit of $600..I think he'd get a lot of attention...heck..I'd vote for him..

[Drennan Whyte]

Didn't congress pass the line item veto power during the Clinton administration? This is the situation where the president needs to use it very liberally.

The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. And a line item veto is only effective if the President will use it. Every item vetoed means one or more ticked-off Congressmen. Even is Bush was interested in cutting spending, and he has shown nothing to date that would indicate that, would he be willing to alientate the very congressmen he will need for his other agenda items?

[princess leah]

How about the government cut jobs starting with the senate and the house? We don't need 2 senators per state - let's cut it in half - hmmm, Schumer or Clinton? Kennedy or Kerry? Boxer or Feinstein? Just think of all the money and hot air that would be saved?

[Labyrinthos]

Bribing us with our own money.

[newgeezer]

Oh, someone PLEASE tell us how the righteous "R" party is SO much better than the Dems in this regard. :-P

[Prince Caspian]

You could think of it as "a cost of doing governance". Like points on a loan or a broker fee.

[newgeezer]

As I recall, either the line-item veto was struck down as unconstitutional, or there's something that makes it non-applicable to appropriations bills.

Either way, *&!@#$!

[newgeezer]

You could think of it as "a cost of doing governance". Like points on a loan or a broker fee.

You could think of corruption in the same terms. But, I don't think we should. Taking money out of our pockets to pay for pork-barrel cr*pola is just as wrong as using it to line their own.

[Prince Caspian]

I agree. It needs to be controlled and minimized. But I think the expectation that this kind of thing can be totally eliminated is unrealistic.

[JSteff]

I believe Clinton got to use it once and it was ruled unconstitutional.

[OneTimeLurker]

Welcome to the new Republican Party everybody.

[The Great RJ]

The entire list should be widely publicized. I think even those on the receiving end could be embarassed by the waste of taxpayer's money.

[NormsRevenge]

Here's an article from WorldNetDaily with some examples of pork barreling..

---

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41592

YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK

It's pork for Thanksgiving in Congress
Lawmakers add $15.8 billion in special projects to massive spending bill


Even though the ruling Republicans' majority leader, Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, claimed the omnibus bill passed in Congress represented "holding the line" on the federal budget, $15.8 billion dollars worth of typical pork-barrel spending is included in the measure.

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group, says its analysis of the bill, passed on Saturday, includes 11,772 earmarks at a cost of $15,780,533,623. The total bill represents $388 billion in federal spending.


"Here they go again," said Keith Ashdown, vice president of programs for the organization, in a statement. "With the fat lady singing on the 108th Congress, lawmakers have just passed a massive spending bill that virtually no one has read, and no one knows much about. Despite this, hardly anyone seems to care.

"We heard a lot about how this bill is fiscally responsible. However, the facts speak for themselves. This bill is the fattest legislative hog that we have ever seen and despite record deficits, lawmakers are much more concerned with feathering the nests of their favorite parochial interests. If this bill is an indicator of what's to come, we will be swimming up a river of red ink for quite some time."

Taxpayers for Common Sense listed the following as what it sees as the bill's most egregious examples of pork projects requested by lawmakers for their districts:


$25,000: Curriculum development for the study of mariachi music, Clark County School Distinct, Nev., Labor-HHS.

$25,000: Banana Factory for an arts and technology after school program, Bethlehem, Pa., Labor-HHS.

$45,000: A+ for Abstinence for abstinence education and related services, Waynesboro, Pa., Labor-HHS.

$300,000: CyberSeniors, Inc. - Experience Senior Power Program, Detroit, Mich., Labor-HHS.

$225,000: National Wild Turkey Federation, S.C., Agriculture.

$250,000: Country Music Hall of Fame, Nashville, Tenn., VA/HUD.

$1,000,000: Missouri Pork Producers Federation: converting animal waste into energy, Mo., VA/ HUD.

$75,000: Renovations of the Merry Go Round Playhouse, Auburn, N.Y., VA/HUD.

$100,000: Punxsutawney Weather Museum, Punxsutawney, Pa., VA/HUD.

$306,000: Restroom repair at Porter Beach at Indian Dunes NL, Ind., Interior.

$4,989,000: Stabilize bathhouses for adaptive reuse, Hot Springs, Ark., Interior.

$800,000: Soybean Rust Research, Ames, Iowa, Interior.

$1,593: Potato Storage, Madison, Wis., Agriculture.

$250,000: Asparagus Technology and Production, Wash., Agriculture.

$50,000: Feral Hogs, Mo., Agriculture.

$150,000: Coca-Cola Space Science Center, Columbs, Ga., VA/HUD

$150,000: Beaver management and damage. Wis., Agriculture

$250,000: Sidewalks, street furniture, and facade improvements. Boca Raton, Fla., VA/HUD

$200,000: American Cotton Museum. Greenville, Texas, VA/HUD.

According to a report in USA Today, earmarks also included

$300,000 for a parking garage in Auburn, Maine,

$8 million to rehabilitate a "historic cafeteria building" in Oregon's Crater Lake National Park and

$1.1 million for research into the development of baby food and other products made from salmon.

[af_vet_rr]

When Bush took office, he promised to cut pet projects from the federal budget, but the president has yet to veto a spending bill. He is expected to sign the new plan as well.

Anybody know if this is true? I thought surely he had a veto or two over pork since 2001.

Do we even care anymore? We are just going to elect the same people in two years, and four years, and so on. Nothing is really going to change.

[softengine]

Oh, someone PLEASE tell us how the righteous "R" party is SO much better than the Dems in this regard.

Really sad. Both parties are totally corrupted by the power and money they have at their disposal.

For so long, I held tight to the belief that the R party had integrity, the country's best interests in mind, and good judgement.... but its really becoming apparent that my trust was misplaced.