Outrageous: Wasteful Spending on Capitol Hill

Wasteful spending was a hot topic during the campaign, but on Capitol Hill, it's worse than ever.

By Michael Crowley
From Reader's Digest
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Burning Bills
From Clipart.com
Even as lawmakers were writing the giant $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout of the financial industry last fall, they were finding creative new ways to waste your money.
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John McCain didn't win the presidency, but he had this right: Earmarks are out of control in Congress. Indeed, even as lawmakers were writing the giant $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout of the financial industry last fall, they were finding creative new ways to waste your money. Buried in a huge budget bill passed the very same week was $6.6 billion in earmarked pork barrel spending-spending slipped in at the request of certain congressmen and never subjected to debate.

Among those pet projects: $2 million for the University of Alaska to study animal hibernation. That was just one of 39 earmarks Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) requested for his home state, just a few weeks before a jury convicted him on federal corruption charges. The total cost of those earmarks to taxpayers: $238.5 million.

The free spending was, of course, bipartisan. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), then the Appropriations Committee chairman, won $40 million to expand a training center for federal customs and border agents. Never mind that the Bush administration said it didn't want the money—the project was in Senator Byrd's home state.

And those are just a couple of highlights from one bill. Flip through the pages of any other spending measure in recent years and you'll find examples just as egregious. Last year's budget included $588 million for a Cold War-era nuclear submarine to be built in Connecticut-money the Pentagon said could be better used elsewhere. Your taxes funded a $3 million earmark requested by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) for a youth summer program at a golf center that bears his name; $123,000 for a Mother's Day shrine in Grafton, West Virginia; and $295,000 for the International Peace Garden in Dunseith, North Dakota (pop. 739). You even paid for a $500,000 teapot museum in North Carolina!

Despite campaign promises of reform from both parties in recent years, the pork problem is only getting worse. During the 2009 budget season, the House Appropriations Committee received so many earmark requests—23,438 of them-that its Web page crashed. In the end, Congress designated 11,610 earmarked projects for this year, at a cost of $17.2 billion, the second-highest amount in almost two decades.
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Your article Outraged,You said it all,EARMARKS means,another piece of the tax payors ear.Short and sweet we have no control.Puttig taxes in escrow and letting someone who knows what their doing,like a penny pintcher in hard times might help.If the world is so bad,WHY do they let people go hungry,thrown out of their homes.Have to explain to their kids why they are out in the street,or why they don't have a job.Maybe the GOV.can let them stay in the tea museaum.Linda Trapp fron Naples Fla.

By pennypincher, on 01/13/2009

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