No one likes pork-barrel spending, except on themselves.
WASHINGTON -- When President Eisenhower proposed the first national highway bill, there were two projects singled out for funding. The latest version has, by one estimate, 6,371 of these special projects, a record that some say politicians should be ashamed of.The projects in the six-year, $286.4 billion highway and mass transit bill passed by Congress last week range from $200,000 for a deer avoidance system in Weedsport, N.Y., to $330 million for a highway in Bakersfield., Calif.
Bringing home pork is how lawmakers get re-elected. On one hand, voters know the government wastes an enormous amount of money on projects that it shouldn't even be involved with, but on the other hand, as long as money is being handed out there's no point in refusing to take a cut.
"Nothing beats a ribbon-cutting ceremony on a new piece of pavement," said Peter Sepp, spokesman for National Taxpayers Union. "Road projects are regarded as a kind of government jobs program that Republicans can safely embrace."
Get it? Our elected officials tax money out of our pockets and then use it to bribe us to get re-elected. Ridiculous.
