Here’s a dog-bites-man story: Demo crats, who took over Congress prom ising to plug the hole Republicans had tapped in the federal treasury, are instead using their power to drill new holes.
The latest leak of taxpayer dollars can (ironically) be found in the bill to fund the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – which oversees flood control, among other obligations. Congress has long used the measure as a “pork tree,” just as it drapes highway bills with countless pork-barrel projects only negligibly related to transportation.
The corps originally requested $4.9 billion, but the Senate took a more expansive view of the nation’s needs, passing a $14 billion bill, while the House opted for $15 billion. In the end, civility reigned, as the two houses “compromised” on a $23.2 billion bill.
It includes more than 450 earmarks (line items directing spending for a specific project), many of them “airdropped” in after the House and Senate bills had already been written – a practice that Democrats said their ethics reforms would prevent.
The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 requires appropriations bills to list each earmark’s sponsor, recipient, amount and justification. But Democrats have instead buried earmark information in unsearchable committee reports. When a reporter asked Rep. John Murtha about this, he snapped, “So, you have to work. Tough s—.”
Democrats promised to cut earmarks in half. Yet so far this year, they’ve authored 11,351, estimates Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation. That’s shy of the GOP’s 2006 record of 13,492, but still nothing to write home about.
Some notables:
* $2 million for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service in Harlem.
* $1 million for the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Ark.
* $100,000 for the “Hunting and Fishing Museum of Pennsylvania.”
* $800,000 for the “Father’s Day Rally Committee” in Pennsylvania.
Add it up, and Congress is on track to slather $10 billion on pork alone.
President Bush has promised to veto the Army Corps bill, not that it’ll help: It passed the House with GOP support, 381-40; only 12 said nay in the Senate.
Bipartisanship, in other words, sometimes is seriously overrated.