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November 3, 2006

The bridge to nowhere

The (Montrose, CO) Daily Press

“Pork,” Mississippi congressman Jamie Whitten once said in a speech, “is the stuff found in the other guy’s district.”

The wry, but true observation of federal spending is from someone who served more than 53 years (1941-1995) in the U.S. House. Whitten’s assessment is right on the mone. Whitten, a Democrat, was famous for bringing home “the pork” to his home district. That’s one reason he was re-elected for 26 terms.

There’s an “anti-pork” campaign in the U.S. Senate, led by Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma. Sen. Coburn is a fiscal conservative, a medical doctor, and an author who wrote ‘Breach of Contract: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders.’ His conservative votes have earned him a 100 percent rating by conservative think tanks.

But it’s his revisionist thinking - like putting federal money to the best use possible - that’s got him on the wrong side of the powerful senior senator from Alaska, Republican Ted Stevens. Sen. Coburn wanted a “report card” on Pentagon spending to grade earmarks. Sen. Stevens had the amendment removed and charged that Sen. Coburn’s anti-pork crusade “hurts the Republican Party.”

It wasn’t the first time Sen. Stevens and Sen. Coburn have tangled. Coburn tried to scotch the “bridge to nowhere,” the infamously expensive bridge in Alaska which connects Gravina, population 50, to Ketchikan, population 8,900. Cost to U.S. taxpayers: $223 million. Coburn wanted to use the “bridge to nowhere” funds to help rebuild two large bridges which were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. But Stevens, 82, pitched a fit on the floor of the Senate, threatening to resign his seat if the “bridge to nowhere” funding was removed. The Senate kept the “bridge,” and threw overboard, the Coburn Amendment, by an 82-11 vote. Some of Stevens’ constituents were embarrassed, writing letters to New Orleans-area newspapers apologizing for their senator’s actions.

In this year’s budget, there were 2,837 earmarks, totaling $11.2 billion for political and parochial causes in this year’s budget. (Some of which came to Montrose, reinforcing the late Mr. Whitten’s premise.) Yet as Sen. Coburn’s actions illustrate, Congress isn’t ready to meet the real needs of Americans. It’s one more reason why the party of fiscal responsibility is at peril of losing its edge in the mid-term elections, less than a week away.

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