President Barack Obama had it both ways Monday when he promoted his stimulus plan in Indiana. He bragged about getting Congress to produce a package with no pork, yet boasted it will do good things for a Hoosier highway and a downtown overpass, just the kind of local projects lawmakers lard into big spending bills.
Obama’s sales pitch on the enormous package he wants Congress to make law has sizzle as well as steak. He’s projecting job creation numbers that may be impossible to verify and glossing over some ethical problems that bedeviled his team.
In recent years, the so-called Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska came to symbolize the worst excesses of congressional earmarks, a device that allows a member of Congress to add money for local projects in legislation, practically under the radar.
Nothing so bold, or specific, as that now-discarded bridge project is contained in the stimulus package. That’s not to say the package steers clear of waste or parochial interests. Obama played to such interests Monday, speaking at one point as if he’d come to fill potholes.
One man’s “pork” is another’s “essential infrastructure project.”
Pork is what other members of Congress put into bills. My congressman only puts in things necessary for the district. (/sarcasm)
That must be the attitude of the majority of Americans. How else can you solve the dilema that congress as a whole has such terrible approval ratings, but so many of them keep getting re-elected?
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
No pork. What do you call 350 million for a FRISBEE® Golf course?
Our park system put one in not too long ago. It didn’t cost anywhere near 3 THOUSAND let alone 350 million.
“How else can you solve the dilema that congress as a whole has such terrible approval ratings, but so many of them keep getting re-elected?”
Gerrymandering and massive voter fraud?
Hark! do ye hear the sound in the distance? Oink, Oink!,Oink! Nuff said.