Freshman Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) recently introduced an amendment to the budget resolution which would have taken money from an incredible piece of pork, a 220 million dollar bridge in Alaska that connects the mainland to an island with a population of about fifty people, and used that money to rebuild a bridge in Louisianna that was damaged by Katrina. The Alaskan bridge, often referred to as the bridge to nowhere, is just a wallet-stuffer for Alaskan workers. The money could have reduced the amount that taxpayers will otherwise be handing over to Louisianna by almost a quarter of a billion dollars.
It's the kind of legislation on which Republicans campaign for office. It's the sort of thing we vote for Republicans to support. The Senate vote was Thursday. It was defeated 85 to 15. Only fifteen senators had enough character to vote on behalf of the American taxpayer and against a spectacular waste. The rest of them voted to squander our money on a bridge that will service no more than a few people a day.
The roll call on the vote can be found here.
The fifteen heroes are: Allard (R-CO), Allen (R-VA) [Our early favorite for '08], Bayh (D-IN), Burr (R-NC), Coburn (R-OK), Conrad (D-ND), DeMint (R-SC), DeWine (R-OH) [Partial redemption for joining the gang of 14], Feingold (D-WI), Graham (R-SC) [Partial redemption for joining the gang of 14], Kyl (R-AZ), Landrieu (D-LA) [We were surprised, too, until we remembered that Louisianna gets the money], Sessions (R-AL), Sununu (R-NH), and Vitter (R-LA). Eleven Republicans and four Democrats.
Noticebly missing from the list are such stalwart Republican opponents of governmental profligacy as John McCain, Rick Santorum (This is Santorum's second offense against principle. His first was endorsing Arlen Specter in his primary race against Pat Toomey), Bill Frist, and, well, the vast majority of the Republican caucus. One expects Democrats to vote for fleecing the public, but it's an outrage that people who advertise themselves as fiscal conservatives have done it. Santorum is in a tough race in '06 in Pennsylvania. He upset a lot of his base with his endorsement of Specter. This vote may have alienated many of them. It certainly has made me consider withholding my vote for the office of senator on election day. Too bad Toomey won't challenge Santorum in the primary.
To make matters worse this amendment was just one of several that Coburn introduced that would have stripped another $500,000 from a sculpture park in Washington, $200,000 from a proposed animal shelter in Rhode Island, and another $200,000 from a parking lot in Omaha, Nebraska, and redirect these monies to disaster relief. Those proposals also lost by similar margins.
The Grich has the pathetic reactions of porkmeisters Ted Stevens of Alaska and Patty Murray of Washington to Coburn's attempt to introduce sanity and integrity to the Senate.
Stevens threatened to resign if he didn't get his bridge. We urge the voters of Alaska to assist him in finding his way out the door.
Murray threatened to block the pet projects of any senator who voted against her sculpture park. May we recommend that the first sculpture will be a huge hog feeding at the public trough.
Andrew Sullivan lists the number of pork projects by year and shows the dramatic increase from 958 in 1996 to 13,997 in 2005. The fat has actually doubled since President Bush came into office.
Ironically, I received a call yesterday afternoon from the RNC asking for a donation. I told the caller, who was not just a hired telemarketer, that I won't be contributing another cent to the Republican party until they start acting like Republicans and start acting like a majority party. Why, I asked her, should we vote for Republicans if they're just going to morph into Democrats? She gave me a number to call to voice my concerns. I suspect that the number, like the bridge in Alaska, goes nowhere.