(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
The highway trust fund was created in 1956 and is fed by the 18.4 cents-per-gallon tax on gasoline and a 24.3 cents-per-gallon tax on diesel.
Such taxes were assessed for 40 years before the trust fund but went into the general fund. Since 1956, it goes into the highway trust fund and if not spent on transportation projects stays in the fund, unavailable for other purposes.
At last a word of sanity on this subject. Alaska is always being accused of feeding at the trough, by people in states getting a million times more pork.
The story starts half way down the page. Its worth your time to read it.
The key point, This is Highway Trust Fund money, if not spent there, it does not buy anything else. It stays in the trust fund.
I used to live in Tok.
Part of the problem is Don Young's extreme arrogance when questioned on the matter.
It's hard to take his claims seriously given his pro-pork credentials.
If they really gave a damn about the environment they would of put in a navigational system to of prevented the Valdez accident.
Instead of building needed infrastructure, (billing the American people who bought and gave them the land), they partied with the oil revenue.
What a load of BS. If that bridge is so important for Alaska, let Alaska use local funds to pay for it. If the state can afford to write checks to their residents each year, they can afford to pay for their own bridge.
Alaska has been The Fleece State for years when it comes to pork. Not really any different than when someone buys beer with a welfare check and then climbs into their Cadillac.
Alaska is a horrible place of glaciers and long winters and mosquitoes. Don't come. Stay away.
Excellent post, akdonn! As an Alaskan, I have been dismayed at the lack of truth being reported in the MSM regarding this topic. Every time I read someone referring to the so-called "bridge to nowhere", I am infuriated. I realize it isn't "their" fault that they are so clueless, but that doesn't make ignorant comments any less irritating. :)
I love telling environmentalists that fact.
YOUR 2005 Congress Approved Pork Barrel Spending Plan.
DON'T GET MAD ---- TAKE ACTION!
Amount
Recipient
$450,000
Baseball Hall of Fame
$97,000
Franco-American Heritage Center, Lewiston , Maine
$25,000
Develop curriculum to study mariachi music, Clark County School District , Nevada
$350,000
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland , Ohio
$150,000
Therapeutic Horseback Riding Program, Lady B Ranch, California
$950,000
Please Touch Museum , Philadelphia , Pennsylvania
$250,000
Police Activities League Center , Anaheim California
$2,000,000
Kitchen Relocation, Fairbanks ( Alaska ) North Star Borough
$250,000
Alaska Statehood Celebration, University of Alaska
$250,000
Country Music Hall of Fame, Nashville , Tennessee
$121,250
Demolition, Broadview Heights , Ohio
$99,000
Train students in the motorsports industry, Patrick Henry Community College
$50,000
Workforce development, Fashion Business, Inc., Los Angeles , California
$100,000
Municipal swimming pool, Ottawa , Kansas
$100,000
Amer-I-Can program for youth, Illinois
$300,000
Relocate the Waynesboro, Mississippi Police Department
$250,000
Camp Police Athletic League of New Jersey
$35,000
Alabama Sports Hall of Fame
$100,000
National Association of Promoting Success
$175,000
Love Social Services, Fairbanks, Alaska
$51,000
Robert E. Lee Community Center, Chase City, Virginia
$150,000
Grammy Foundation
$167,000
Horn Fly Research in Alabama
$72,750
Public swimming pool construction, Prescott, Alaska
$300,000
Revitalize downtown Council Bluffs, Iowa
$500,000
Beyond Missing
$75,000
Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame, New York
$100,000
High Falls Film Festival, Rochester, New York
$291,000
International Museum of Women, San Francisco, California
$300,000
Streetlights and salt dome, Markham, Illinois
$1,500,000
Transport naturally chilled water from Lake Ontario to Lake Onondaga
$250,000
City pool renovation and construction, Banning, California
$250,000
Construct the Great Falls Parking Garage, Auburn, Maine
$6,285,000
Wood utilization research across several states
$200,000
Aviation Hall of Fame
$500,000
Equipment purchases, KENW public radio station, Portales, New Mexico
$100,000
“No Workshops, No Jumpshots," Virginia
$200,000
Audie Murphy/American Cotton Museum, Greenville, Texas
$275,000
National History Museum of the Adirondacks, Tupper Alaska
$150,000
Obscenity Crimes Project
$100,000
Breedlove Dehydrated Foods, Lubbock, Texas
$50,000
Feral hog control in Missouri
$250,000
Traffic calming, Windermere, Florida
$500,000
Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City
$250,000
North Creek Ski Bowl, North Creek, New York
$1,750,000
Parents Anonymous
$1,500,000
Wood products wastewater repairs Canton, North Carolina
$150,000
Fishing Rationalization Research in Alaska
$1,500,000
Anchorage Museum/Transit intermodal depot, Alaska
$500,000
Center for the Living Arts, Alabama
$500,000
B&O Railroad Museum Restoration, Maryland
$250,000
Surplus federal property study, Walla Walla, Washington
$98,000
Alaska Sea Otter Commission
$200,000
Dennison Railroad Depot Museum, Ohio
$2,500,000
Horse Springs Ranch, New Mexico
$150,000
“Parent Intern” program, Our House, Inc., Decatur, Georgia
$3,000,000
Center for Grape Genetics, Geneva, New York
$150,000
Coca-Cola Space Science Center, Columbus, Georgia
$100,000
Punxsutawney (Pennsylvania) Weather Museum
$280,000
Sidewalks, street furniture and façade improvements, Bakersfield, California
$1,000,000
B.B. King Museum Foundation, Indianola, Mississippi
$250,000
A day care center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota
$268,000
Livestock waste research in Iowa
$350,000
Project Peacemaker, Turtle Mountain Community College, North Dakota
$200,000
Wallace State Center for Automotive Manufacturing and Plastics, Hanceville, Alabama
$160,000
Seafood waste in Alaska
$1,108,000
Alternative salmon products in Alaska
$796,000
Ice Age National Scientific Reserve
$42,124
Citrus waste utilization in Florida
$50,000
Wild rice research in Minnesota
$300,000
Wool research
$100,000
Trees Forever Program, Iowa
$1,800,000
Eider and sea otter recovery at Alaska Sea Life Center
$1,000,000
Trailways Station Revitalization and Visitors Center, Georgia
$3,500,000
Bus acquisition in Atlanta
$1,000,000
Clean fuel shuttle buses in Atlanta
$750,000
Broward/Palm Beach County buses, Florida
$2,000,000
Replace buses in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
$200,000
YMCA bus, Alabama
$25,000
Fitness equipment, YMCA of Bradford County, Pennsylvania
$921,000
Hardwood tree improvement and regeneration, Indiana
$350,000
Leafy spurge eradication in North Dakota
$10,000
Slickspot Peppergrass
$500,000
Chugach NF Valdez visitor center, Alaska
$2,300,000
Animal Waste Management Research Laboratory, Bowling Green, Kentucky
$515,000
Brown tree snake management in Guam
$3,000,000
Grape Genomics Research Center, Davis, California
$347,000
Grapefruit juice/drug interaction research, Florida
$63,000
Noxious Weed in the Desert Southwest, Las Cruces, New Mexico
$470,000
Swine and other animal waste management research, North Carolina
$150,000
“Check ‘Em Out” program
$750,000
Close Up Foundation
$100,000
Marine turtles program
$430,000
Automotive technology and repair workforce training, Excel Institute, Washington, D.C.
$100,000
Pennsylvania Hunting and Fishing Museum, Warren, Pennsylvania
$1,250,000
Train-to-Mountain, Washington
$150,000
Alaska Botanical Garden
$250,000
Boardwalk in Brookings Harbor, Oregon
$200,000
Brookings Harbor Seafood Processing Plant, Oregon
$800,000
Improve a historic building in Las Vegas, Nevada
$500,000
Kincaid Park Soccer and Nordic Ski Center, Anchorage, Alaska
$100,000
National Railway Museum, Green Bay, Wisconsin
$900,000
Tongass Coast Aquarium, Ketchikan Alaska
$60,652,124 Total
Thursday, May 19, 2005
In total dollars, California is the biggest winner so far with nearly $1.4 billion in pork and Delaware receives the smallest share ($12 million), says the tax group. On a per capita basis, Alaska is the biggest hog, getting more than $1,100 for every man woman and child in the state.
Once pork is factored out, however, Michigan motorists stand to fare better than in previous decades.
Under the Senate version of the spending, Michigan will get some $1.1 billion a year to fix and expand highways and bridges, up 28 percent from the previous annual allotment. The state would get back 92 cents for every $1 it sends to Washington in gas taxes.
Building and fixing Michigan roads has been in a holding pattern. The state is hesitant to approve big projects until it knows the size of the federal transportation spending pot.
*** spending documents don't identify who proposed each item or why.
Washington Spending: Pass the Pork, Please
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Michigan's two Democratic senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, let it be known they had won $4 million for an environmentally friendly public transportation system in Traverse City.
Many of the special items that made the cut were promoted by lobbyists hired by interest groups, companies or communities to convince lawmakers money was needed for their projects.
In typical MSM fashion, they talk a lot about things they really have no idea about.
Red6
Interesting. I didn't know anything about his proposed bridge except the snippets I'd heard on TV and in the news. I'd NEVER heard what this writer is saying. Sounds like it is a good investment; better than anything Bobbie Byrd is likely to request in W. Virginia.
One friend told me that winters were the very best, with the Northern Lights' shows, a hangered Cessna 185, an uncracked windshield, new tires and chains, oak for the wood stove and sapling walnut and apple for the smokers, a freezer locker full of packaged moose, a basement full of smoked salmon, your well used .375 H&H on the wall, your Freedom Arms .475 Linebaugh in its holster, and your woman with her 38s in bed.
Ahhhhhhh, to be a romantic building an R-48 log cabin with the little woman tinkering with the Briggs&Stratton under the washer so she can do laundry. {8^)