PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Ed Feulner writes:
Need proof of how pork-addicted Congress has become? Consider this: Some in the Senate are looking for ways to shift funds from the troops in Iraq to some of their favorite pet projects.
At risk is the $94.4 supplemental spending bill President Bush requested from Congress to provide $92 billion for hurricane relief and the troops in Iraq, and $2.4 billion for avian flu response. Despite his warning that anything more would be vetoed, several senators abused the legislation’s must-pass status to add $14 billion in wasteful pork-barrel goodies for influential constituents, labor unions and corporations.
Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, introduced several amendments to strip these earmarks, but despite some close votes, all but one lost.
Unable to control their colleagues, 35 senators signed a letter promising to support a veto, and the House of Representatives’ leadership announced it would refuse to accept any supplemental exceeding the $94.4 billion target. Despite these positive signs in favor of spending restraint, some in the Senate want to concoct a face-saving deal with the president to sustain these wasteful proposals. Their plan: Shortchange the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to preserve most of the pork.
Meanwhile, here’s an interview with Coburn:
Sitting in his office on a recent morning after two weeks of constant battle with Senate spenders, Mr. Coburn was upbeat over how much he had managed to save for the American taxpayer.
“Fifteen million,” he boasted wryly, fully grasping what a small dent that put in the $14 billion in added pork.
But he said there was a point anyway.
“But remember, we’re not measuring it that way,” he said of the staggering amount of pork that still got through. “This is a long-term strategy to change the behavior in the Congress and to change that behavior by exciting the American people and having them start paying attention. And they are.”
Mr. Coburn pointed to a poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal that showed the No. 1 priority American voters have for Congress is ending the process of “earmarks,” the special projects that members of Congress insert into spending bills to curry political favor.
That the issue has become of such urgent concern to voters is in no small measure because of the single-minded efforts of Mr. Coburn, who won election to the Senate just two years ago. Before that, he entered the House as one of the Republican “Class of 1994,” but left in 2001, keeping his pledge to serve only three terms.
That the issue has become of such urgent concern also has to do with the extravagant examples of pork that Mr. Coburn has hauled out of the shadows, onto the Senate floor and for days ridiculed on national television.
Ridicule is a key weapon. Fortunately, it’s a target-rich environment.
UPDATE: Reader George Walton offers this summary: “Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan risking their butts, but our senators don’t want to risk their seats.”
Like I said. . . .