Looking back at the transportation bill passed in July, unnecessary spending was a bi-partisan problem. Nearly every lawmaker on the Hill saw an opportunity to bring home some highway money for their district — and they took it.<\/p>\n
But with Hurricane Katrina relief poised to cost as much as $200 billion, it’s interesting to note which party’s leaders are prepared to go back and reconsider those pork projects and which aren’t<\/a>.<\/p>\n After Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that she would be willing to forgo her highway bill earmarks to help pay for Katrina, [House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay was asked if he would do the same. <\/p>\n “I don’t know about that,” DeLay said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Exactly. It’s time for real sacrifice, the Dem House leader is prepared to give up some of the pork she requested for her district, but DeLay won’t do the same.<\/p>\n Of course, it’s not just DeLay. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), whose penchant for pork is legendary, had an even less tasteful response. When told that he secured $223 million for a bridge to nowhere in his state, and perhaps, in light of intense budget pressures, he could redirect his pork to better uses, Young was indignant<\/a>.<\/p>\n “They can kiss my ear!” Young boomed when Sam Bishop, Washington correspondent for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, asked him about the many pleas to redirect the bridge money. “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Remind me, which is the party with the reputation for reckless federal spending? At what point do we get to start using the phrase “tax and spend conservatives”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Looking back at the transportation bill passed in July, unnecessary spending was a bi-partisan problem. Nearly every lawmaker on the Hill saw an opportunity to bring home some highway money for their district — and they took it. But with Hurricane Katrina relief poised to cost as much as $200 billion, it’s interesting to note […]<\/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-5314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5314","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=5314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}