The New York Times: "Surely Rep. Don Young, the Alaska Republican who is chairman of the transportation committee, might put off that $223 million 'bridge to nowhere' in his state's outback. It's redundant now—Louisiana suddenly has several bridges to nowhere."
The Wall Street Journal: "That same half a billion dollars (for the two Alaska bridges) could rebuild thousands of homes for suffering New Orleans evacuees."
No doubt to make Alaskans look bad, city leaders in Bozeman, Mont., are investigating whether they can give Katrina victims the $4 million they got in the federal bill for a downtown parking garage.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., raised the charitable pork idea on the Senate floor last week, although he stopped short of endorsing it.
So, how about it, Mr. Chairman?
"They can kiss my ear!" Young boomed when Sam Bishop, Washington correspondent for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, asked him about the many pleas to redirect the bridge money.
"That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Young went on, noting that Louisiana did quite well in his highway bill.
Well there you go. Louisiana got their pork, use it for heaven sake! And besides look what Young did for the surivors of Katrina:
And, the congressman said, he helped the seafood industry donate more than $500,000 for hurricane victims. (That was at the "Seafood Invitational," a charity golf tournament Sept. 9 in Roslyn, Wash., Bishop reported Friday.)
"I raised enough money to give back to them voluntarily," he said, "and that's it!"
Ah, got it Congressman. $500,000 in seafood equals $223 million in pork from the old federal feed trough.
No wonder they call it the other white meat.
And Republicans wonder why they're seen less and less as the party of "less spending and less government". If the Dems can ever make a convincing national security case, there's nothing of worth to differentiate them from the Repubs except tax cuts, and at some point, even that's not going to be enough, especially if the spending continues unabated.
Look, everyone with the IQ of a watermelon knows that spending is out of hand. And they also know Katrina didn't help the situation one bit. I don't think its asking too much to put aside a lot of the planned spending to pay for Katrina. As the Rocky Mountain News points out:
The answer is that Katrina should be paid for by some combination of the following: postponing the prescription-drug benefit; scaling back on the pork in the just-passed $286 billion highway bill; requiring new spending programs and tax cuts to be offset elsewhere in the budget; and paying rigorous attention to existing federal spending, such as the billions squandered on farm subsidies.
Of course had Republicans done what they said they were going to do lo these last 6 years concerning subsidies and the size of government, this wouldn't be an issue right now, would it?
Instead we have the Tom DeLays and Don Youngs of the political world to remind us how badly they've performed in that time frame.
I used to live in Ketchikan, AK, and I can tell you for fact that the bridge proposed is truly a bridge to nowhere. It would connect Ketchikan, on the island of Revillagigedo, to their airport on Gravina Island just across the straights. The think is, there is already a ferry that works extremely well and the residents acknowledge that and many of them don’t even want the bridge.
The Republicans are pigs treating our treasury as a trough. And cheers to QandO for fighting the good fight. You’re doing a heckuva job, McQueey. Heckuva job.
Yeah, I know, and in a perfect libertarian world, etc. etc.
But this isn’t that world and it’s going to happen whether you approve or not. So I’m for cheap and effective. And that means actual management of money instead of throwing it in the air and hoping it fixes the problem.
Yeah, I know, that’s about as feasible as not fixing the place.
...except tax cuts, and at some point, even that’s not going to be enough, especially if the spending continues unabated.
If you really think about that statement, if you follow it to its logical conclusion...you arrive at what may just Bush’s latest rope-a-dope strategy.
Okay, to be fair, there’s blessed little evidence of it. But we have the economic growth to sustain a deficit for a while. What’s the best way to tie the hands of a Democrat President who follows Bush but give him a deficit that must be cut along with a populace accustomed to lower taxes? What’s the best way to give a Republican President the mandate to slash the budget while silencing Democrats’ criticism?
Why, it looks an awful lot like your sentence above, doesn’t it?
Sure, that’s not necessarily so. I could be wrong. Even if I’m right, it could be a miscalculation on the part of Bush and Rove. But not every Republican President deals with a 9/11 event in his first term and a New Orleans failure in his second. Not every Republican President is this unwilling to use a Veto. And if the people are screaming for a reduction in the deficit, it makes it easier than if people are apathetic.
Now, that Nathan is a bright fellow. Yes, the DNC-talking-points claim that Bush is clueless, has no plan, has no grasp of how to run anything, etc. Well, somebody kicked Democrat butt, not once, but twice. It occurs to me that I might find it extremely difficult to vote for a party who currently look so bad and have absolutely no coherent program (other than NOTBUSH) and who ran such losers [what were their names?] as their "leaders for America" in the last two presidential elections. My version of the "divided government" bs would be to elect Kerry/Ted Kennedy or perhaps Howdy Doody and Clarabelle. That would be a divided government and it makes as much sense as the claim that electing Democrats to Congress solely to divide government will solve any problem or be an improvement.
What’s the best way to tie the hands of a Democrat President who follows Bush but give him a deficit that must be cut along with a populace accustomed to lower taxes? What’s the best way to give a Republican President the mandate to slash the budget while silencing Democrats’ criticism?
What’s the best way to watch hand grenade juggling?
After all, we see how far Social Security reform has gone. It hasn’t yet become a absolutely-cannot-ignore-anymore problem.
