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February 09, 2006
Bridge To Nowhere
Wasteful spending is nothing new to Washington, but this time the taxpayers won one and that's news!
Remember the "bridge to nowhere" that was to be built in Alaska, connecting the mainland to a small island with no population?
Good news! The new proposal would strip from the transportation bill the requirement that Alaska spend nearly half a billion federal taxpayer dollars on two wasteful and unnecessary bridges and leave it up to the local authorities how they wish to spend the money.
"The transportation bill had 6,371 transportation earmarks at the cost of more than $24 billion, so eliminating these earmarks is an important turn of events, but it doesn’t turn a budgetary loser into fiscal winner. The good news here is that these efforts put more of the decision making on state and local officials, who are the experts in what a state does and does not need."(1)
The original worthless pork project was sponsored by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Rep. Don Young (R-AK). Stevens and Young have been the butt of jokes on radio and television since the pork was discovered by taxpayer watchdog groups.
On a darker note, President Bush has yet to use his power of veto to control pork spending. "In its annual budget and economic report, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that this year's deficit will be $337 billion, up $19 billion from 2005. It said the deficit will be about $360 billion if extra anticipated costs for Iraq, Afghanistan and the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast are added.
The White House has pegged this year's projected deficit at more than $400 billion, citing the costs of the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. The White House budget office has overestimated the size of the deficit in the past two years by using what it says are "cautious" economic and revenue projections." (2)
1.) http://www.taxpayer.net/Transportation/gravinabridge.htm
2.) http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-01-26-federaldeficit_x.htm
Posted by Post Scripts at February 9, 2006 08:51 AM