I’VE ALREADY POSTED MY PORKBUSTERS CONTRIBUTION, but I notice that Michael Silence has rounded up quite a few local pork projects, including mine. I hope that other newpapers and newspaper blogs will pick this up, and follow through by interviewing members of Congress.
UPDATE: Reader Chris Whittaker emails:
I just reviewed the Tennessee portion of the highway bill, and even being generous by assuming that anything having to do with roads was a valid project, here is a conservative pork estimate of what I found, with project numbers included:
Greenways (Pork)- $8.35 million
Project Nos. 66, 3429, 4953, 4977Bikes and Trails (Pork)- $17.912 million
Project Nos. 97, 268, 339, 355, 463, 627, 828, 1135, 1832, 2440, 2567, 3252, 3267, 4955, 4958Transportation Heritage Museums (Pork)- $1.808 million
Project Nos. 1038, 2411, 4975, 391Miscellaneous (ex. walkways, visitors centers, interpretive centers, Trail of Tears museum)- $19.6 million Project Nos. 1517, 2154, 2212, 4926, 4927, 4933, 4937, 4938, 4949, 4952
TOTAL TENNESSEE PORK: $47.67 million dollars…, Blogosphere 1, DeLay 0, ADVANTAGE: Blogosphere.
Sorry, Tom.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A different Chris, Chris Nolan, thinks this whole effort is wrong:
It’s also an extension of the attitude that got us and everyone in New Orleans into this mess in the first place.
I don’t think so. As we’ve seen, money that might have shored up the levees was diverted to . . . pork! (“‘Our politicians never cared half as much about protecting us as they cared about pork,’ Dashiell said.”)
She does offer up the argument that one person’s pork is another’s vital spending. Well, sometimes. Citizens Against Government Waste takes a procedural stance:
Q: This project sounds worthy. Why do you insist on calling it pork?
A: The pork label is a result of how a project receives funding and is not a subjective judgment of a project’s worth.
While CAGW is not judging the merit of projects included in our Pig Book, the point remains that many of these projects are local projects. If a local project receives federal funding it should be acquired through the federal competitive system.
If members of Congress insist on skirting the rules to get funding for a project, even for a seemingly important project, the resulting breakdown in accountability throws open the door to almost any kind of project. So while taxpayers may enjoy a local bridge or school renovation, they will also be paying for hundreds of egregious projects from which they will never benefit, such as screwworm research or a tattoo removal program four states away.
I tend to think that things that are obviously local — civic centers, pedestrian bridges, etc. — shouldn’t be done by the feds. Things that aren’t about, say, highways — like money for methamphetamine busts — shouldn’t be in highway bills. Etc. Yeah, some of these might conceivably be worthy, but I’m skeptical and I think the burden is on their proponents to demonstrate their worthiness.
Oh, well. There’s room to disagree on this, but I don’t really think that Chris Nolan is siding with Tom Delay here. Am I wrong?