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Editorial: Public projects starve while Congress porks out on ‘earmarks’
(Ketchum) Idaho Mountain Express
September 14, 2007
Members of Congress have made a ritual of wringing their hands about the "broken Army" of exhausted GIs rotated in and out of Iraq and their battered equipment.
Americans, however, see something far worse: an ethically broken Congress that continues to gorge itself on billions of dollars of self-serving, often frivolous appropriations to keep the folks back home happy so they'll be grateful at the next election while the nation's real needs are on starvation rations.
Congress vowed to rein in these notorious "earmarks" after Alaska's Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young wanted taxpayers to finance the infamous, $200 million-plus "bridge to nowhere"—a span from Ketchikan to Gravina Island, inhabited by 50 people.
But, it's back to the public trough for the gluttonous lawmakers.
According to a new report from the Department of Transportation's inspector general, some $2 billion out of $8 billion in projects is for pet projects of lawmakers. In his report, the inspector general found that 1,615 of the DOT's 7,760 projects bypassed normal review.
Among the projects, according to an analysis by the newspaper USA TODAY, are a California mule and packer museum, a $250,000 bike trail, a North Dakota peace garden, a Montana baseball stadium and a history museum for one of the nation's wealthiest cities, Las Vegas.
While this ladling of tax funds into congressional districts was apace, the national infrastructure—dams, bridges, railroads, schools, sewage disposal, water treatment plants and the like—continued to rust or rot.
A vivid reminder of the state of the infrastructure was the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge, which had been listed as deficient for years. Appeals from critics of earmarks to end the unseemly appetite were ignored. Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, proposed ending earmarks until every deficient bridge in the country is repaired. That was rejected by a vote of 82 to 14.
The Bush administration shares in this shame. It has shoveled money into the war in Iraq—billions of it unaccounted for or stolen—with no equal concern for spending on desperate U.S. domestic needs.
The American Society of Civil Engineers has been scrupulous in tracking the national infrastructure's condition and this year estimates repairs would cost $1.6 trillion over five years.
The result of Congress and the White House ignoring that spending need is obvious: far higher costs stretched over a longer period and, inevitably, another Minneapolis-type bridge or dam collapse that could be avoided.
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