The highway bill seemed like such a good idea when it sailed through Congress this summer. But now Republicans who assembled the record spending package are suffering buyer's remorse.
The $286 billion legislation was stuffed with 6,000 pet projects for lawmakers' districts, including what critics denounce as a $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" that would replace a 7-minute ferry ride in a sparsely populated area of Alaska. Usually members of Congress cannot wait to rush home and brag about such bounty -- a staggering number of parking lots, bus depots, bike paths and new interchanges for just about every congressional district in the country that added $24 billion to the overall cost of maintaining the nation's highways and bridges in the coming years.
But with spiraling war and hurricane recovery costs, the pork-laden bill has become a political albatross for Republicans, who have been promising since President Bush took office to get rid of wasteful spending.
Don't worry though, they have a plan. They've figured out what to do about it. Is it repealing all of the pork that's earmarked in the highway bill? Surely you jest. How will they do it? By screwing poor people.
From yesterday's Washingotn Post:
The Senate approved sweeping deficit-reduction legislation last night that would save about $35 billion over the next five years by cutting federal spending on prescription drugs, agriculture supports and student loans, while clamping down on fraud in the Medicaid program.
The measure would also open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, a long-sought goal of the oil industry that took a major step forward after years of political struggle. A bipartisan effort to strip the drilling provision narrowly failed.
The Senate bill, which passed 52 to 47, is the first in nearly a decade to tackle the growth of entitlement spending, the part of the federal budget that rises automatically based on set formulas and population changes.
It would shave payments to some farmers by 2.5 percent, while eliminating a major cotton support program and trimming agriculture conservation spending. A proposal to limit payments to rich farmers failed yesterday. The measure passed largely along party lines, with only two Democrats voting for it and five Republicans voting against it.
I have nothing else to add to this outrage.
-The Oklahoma Hippy
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ReplyDeleteDon't worry though, they have a plan. They've figured out what to do about it. Is it repealing all of the pork that's earmarked in the highway bill? Surely you jest. How will they do it? By screwing poor people.
How true your words are!
Yes, they will take away from some of the people they've made even more poor than they were before Republicans were in the majority.
Republicans (IMO) are selfish, stingy people to everyone except themselves, or someone they think can do them some "good".
They think police, fire, teachers, and other public type workers should work for little or nothing and be grateful! They don't want cities or
counties to have any money to run on, and they think the more they have, the less they should have to pay in taxes.
Reasonable people don't mind paying taxes for city, county , state and federal services. People that do the services have to be paid.
THEY think they deserve those services for free!!
If they overspend as they are doing now, they give to themselves and take it away from those that can least afford it, and they lie and blame it on those they are taking it away from.
This administration is making us a two tiered society, and eliminating the middle class. They won the election with lies and dirty tricks, and call themselves Christian!
I would say that this Bush administration is more corrupt than the Nixon White House could ever have dreamed of being.
At least with the pork barrel highway bill they have proved themselves to be greedy bastards in BLACK AND WHITE! Now watch them try to blame that on us, too!!
I'm surprised this bill didn't include the total dissembling of the CPB. I'm all for slowing the ridiculous amount of spending coming out of Washington, but this seems misguided at best.
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