Pork Barrel Spending

Pork barrel spending, earmarks or wasteful spending, whatever you want to call it, cost tax payers billions of dollars each year. Republican leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives have no problem staring into a reporter's camera to dutifully inform the American people how wasteful their government is, more specifically the Democrats. Like we didn't already know that. We can not stimulate the economy and rob the tax payers coffers at the same time with earmarks for pet projects, we are told. None of us disagree with that statement. The only thing wrong with it, most of the people making it are just as guilty as the next when it comes time to slip an earmark in for the folks back home.

House Republicans banded together and cast a "No" vote in opposition to the stimulus plan put forth by the Democrats. If they truly don't believe in the bill, they shouldn't vote for it. Some sincere honesty instead of spin and finger pointing would be nice to here once in awhile. Republicans claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility, as we are constantly reminded. Democrats are tax and spend liberals who use our dollars for their own pet projects. That may be true, but Democrats are not alone in seeking out tax money for their particular pet projects.

Fiscal responsibility is relative to how you view pork barrel spending. Did your Senator or Representative bring your state or particular area tax payer money that improved worn out university or local school buildings? Did your state receive money to build a bike path to help protect those who ride their bikes to work or for recreation by moving bike routes off of main roads? Did tax payer money help fund research facilities or museums where you live? How ever the money was used, cities and towns across the country benefit from public money. Most who received pork would not admit the money was a waste of tax payer dollars. Just ask the people who former Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska represented. He's viewed as a hero for the money he siphoned into Alaska. Any organization, city or state who has used tax payer money for a project or to fund research have most likely never cared if that money as pork barrel spending. It doesn't matter which political party obtained the money. If your senator or representative brought home some bacon last year, they've done their job by keeping the people they represent happy.

Of course the federal government should and must use our tax dollars responsibly and wisely. How many billions of dollars have been lost to crooked government contractors who have done shoddy work that congress didn't regulate. I don't hear congress calling to withhold tax dollars until incomplete or poor construction work has been finished or repaired. Wasteful and irresponsible spending is just as bad as pork barrel spending.

According to Citizens Against Government Spending, 2008 cost tax payers $17 billion for a total of 11,610 projects your congressman requested and received through the 12 Appropriations Bills passed by congress. Money that was requested by both parties.

It's ironic as well as troubling when Republicans stand together in opposition against unnecessary spending and call Democrats out, all the while filling their coffers in the back room alongside Democrats. Anyone calling for restraint in spending should not be slipping requests of their own in appropriation bills.

Republican Senator, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is among those who look into the camera and demand fiscal responsibly, yet he is one who has funneled billions to his home state of Kentucky over his 5 terms in the senate. In 2008 alone, he requested and got $38 million for Louisville parks and to develop the Jefferson Memorial Forest that just happens to have a Mitch McConnell Loop Trail in it. He gave Owensbors $60 million to give their downtown area a face lift and $3 million for a community center, along with $10 million for an Ohio River bridge link to I-64. After all was said and done, Senator McConnell took home to Kentucky $650 million for his states' pet projects. Last year while campaigning for his 5^th term in office, he bragged to the people of Kentucky how he alone was responsible for $650 million out of the billions in federal earmarks granted in 2008. It was good enough to get him reelected. He, along with 12 of his Republican colleagues, most of them from southern states, requested $8 billion in pork for projects to dole out in their states that would benefit those areas where they could get the most bang for the buck. Dishing it out in areas where they were pretty sure how people would vote.

Obviously, Senator McConnell is not alone in spending our money for pet projects. Most in congress on both sides of the aisle are willing to play the money game in Washington in hopes of retaining their seats at election time. Politics is a nasty business of deception; smoke and mirrors. The winner is the one who can convincingly blame the other party for the woes of the country as they hide behind false outrage while cameras roll. That one sound bite for the evening news that makes them appear innocent. As long as a majority of people agree, who cares if a little pork was used as an incentive to sway voters in their direction. Both sides ask for and receive money even as they call for fewer and more transparent earmarks. Question is, when will Washington start to regulate themselves? Congress is not likely to give up one of their most important tools at election time.

It would be refreshing if all of our senators and representatives refrained from pork barrel spending, but that isn't going to happen as long as they can complain in front of the cameras while filling their pockets away from the publics view.

We Americans work hard to pay our taxes. Congress should work just as hard to curb earmarks and use our money wisely and responsibly. Both parties. That's all we ask and it's what we expect from those we send to Washington.

John Botchelor, How Obama Can Pay Off Mitch McConnell, RBO

Carl Hulse, A Senate Leader's Pork-Barrel Punch, The New York Times