Really, you can't make this stuff up.
The Citizens Against Government Waste has issued their 14th Congressional Pig Book. This federal budget tell-all has appeared annually since 1991. CWGW's latest compilation of pork-barrel projects is taken from 11 appropriations bills that are included in the fiscal 2006 federal budget and total a wallet-busting $29 billion, an increase of 6.2 per cent over last year's pork!
And just what did the hard work and sweat of the U.S. taxpayers fund?
Let's get to the best first.....$13,500,000 for the International Fund for Ireland, which includes an appropriation for the World Toilet Summit. (I'm not kidding.)
Actually we might not have objected if the Summit was to be held in the b.s. mega-center, Washington D.C. Not to worry, the U.S. got in the toilet sweepstakes with $1 million allocated for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative ......don't ask.
The Teapot Dome scandal may belong to the dustbin of history, but not the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, NC, bagged at $500,000.
We'll blow $550,000 for the Tacoma Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA.
In the "wonder what he has on them" category, Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) pulled down the most pork for his state.....$325,106,000.....or nearly $500 for every man, woman, caribou and child in Alaska. (Although he did better in 2005, snagging $985 per capita.)
And where does our anti-lobbying, straight-talking, presidential hopeful, John McCain's (R-AZ) state of Arizona place at the trough.....last, right? Wrong. Arizona came in 20th with an oinking $228, 076,000 in pork.
In February the Washington Post published the proposed Bush administration budget for 2006 and guess where the cuts are to come from.
Not from the Department of Defense which was slated for $419.3 billion, plus another $80 billion for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Cuts are to come from the Department of Education budget, for instance, which was reduced by $500,000, the first overall cut in federal spending for education in a decade. While funds were increased in the DOE budget for the misconceived "No Child Left Behind" testing program, the Perkins college loan program for low- and middle-income students was eliminated.
The $500,000 to spend on the Teapot Museum was offset by an equal cut in the Environmental Protection Agency budget, including $170,000 for water quality protection. Don't you think the tea would taste better if the water........
This pork represents a historic lack of spending restraint by the Bush administration and Congress and creates a projected $371 billion budget deficit (not including the "off budget" $80 billion for the war) and a national debt of almost $9 trillion in fiscal 2006.
The usual taunt of the GOP toward the Democrats is that they are the tax and spend party.
Well pour my tea and flush my toilet, but isn't that better than the GOP cutting taxes and increasing spending!
1 comment:
Well spoken, Pinball.
You may yet get what you wish for...if China calls in their U.S. notes (as they have threatened a couple of times lately) we're in a whole world of hurt. And, if Congress hadn't raised the debt ceiling, flat-out broke is where we would already be.
But, if we started over would we get anything better, or are we just getting the government we voted for? And therein lies another rub, IS this the government we voted for???
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