{"id":4945,"date":"2005-08-11T10:28:04","date_gmt":"2005-08-11T14:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4945.html"},"modified":"2005-08-11T10:28:04","modified_gmt":"2005-08-11T14:28:04","slug":"nothing-to-do-with-fiscal-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/nothing-to-do-with-fiscal-responsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing to do with fiscal responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

I understand the White House wants to brag a little about its transportation bill monstrosity, but the speech<\/a> at the bill-signing ceremony was just silly.<\/p>\n

“This law makes our highways and mass transit systems safer and better, and it will help more people find work. And it accomplishes goals in a fiscally responsible way. We are not raising gasoline taxes in order to pay for this bill.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, not raising gas taxes has nothing to do with the debate. It’s like bragging, “No one was shot while passing this legislation.” No one in Congress seriously suggested a gas-tax increase, so this superfluous boast didn’t really make any sense.<\/p>\n

But more important was the claim that Congress wrote and Bush signed a “fiscally responsible” bill. The White House said any transportation bill that cost more than $256 billion would be rejected. Congress ignored him and Bush, who talks tough about limiting government spending, said he didn’t care<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, President Bush went to war against congressional pork. His official 2003 budget even featured a color photo of a wind-powered ice sled — an example of the pet projects and alleged boondoggles he said he would no longer tolerate. Yesterday, Bush effectively signed a cease-fire — critics called it more like a surrender — in his war on pork. He signed into law a $286 billion transportation measure that contains a record 6,371 pet projects inserted by members of Congress from both parties. […]<\/p>\n

[H]undreds of millions of dollars will be channeled to programs that critics say have nothing to do with improving congestion or efficiency: $2.3 million for the beautification of the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California; $6 million for graffiti elimination in New York; nearly $4 million on the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio, and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.; $2.4 million on a Red River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Louisiana; and $1.2 million to install lighting and steps and to equip an interpretative facility at the Blue Ridge Music Center, to name a few.<\/p>\n

“There are nearly 6,500 member-requested projects worth more than $24 billion, nearly nine percent of the total spending,” executives from six taxpayer and conservative groups complained in a letter to Bush urging that he use his veto pen for the first time. They noted that Reagan vetoed a transportation bill in 1987 because there were 152 such special requests, known in the parlance of congressional budgeting as “earmarks.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know this is merely stating the obvious, but Bush loves big government. For all his threats about John Kerry boosting federal spending, no one loves using the government’s credit card more than this president.<\/p>\n

I only wish he’d admit it. Calling the bill “fiscally responsible” is just an insult to the country’s intelligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I understand the White House wants to brag a little about its transportation bill monstrosity, but the speech at the bill-signing ceremony was just silly. “This law makes our highways and mass transit systems safer and better, and it will help more people find work. And it accomplishes goals in a fiscally responsible way. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}