OPINION & EDITORIAL
Congress continues to feast on pork
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Also by Andrew Traverse:
- Student regent not returning my calls (November 20, 2007)
- Congress continues to feast on pork (November 6, 2007)
- Students face unfair possibility of double jeopardy (October 23, 2007)
- Students deserve to control seg fees (October 9, 2007)
Related Stories:
- Congressional Spending (December 8, 2003)
- Republicans bankrupting America with excessive spending (September 22, 2005)
- Rampant spending piles on more debt (November 30, 2004)
- Pork: it's what's for your Rep's dinner (December 7, 2005)
- Veto bill could limit spending (April 26, 2007)
by Andrew Traverse
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Listen up, American taxpayers, because you’re getting
royally screwed! Don’t pay taxes yet? Well, you will soon, so listen up!
Congress has still added an extra $1.8 billion in earmark spending to the
newest military appropriations bill. Now, I’m not surprised by the fact that
our government is spending money, nor does a billion dollars seem like a lot of
money in the grand scheme of things anymore, but I am thoroughly disturbed by
the fact that this $1.8 billion went to 580 private companies for services that
the Pentagon did not request.
An earmark, or financing for pet projects, is a simple
ordeal: Congressmen will lobby to the rest of the House in order to appropriate
funds to companies, usually small and/or struggling ones, in their districts.
Unfortunately, many of these pet projects offer nothing beneficial to the rest
of the country, and as one can see, they can often get expensive.
To the Democrat-controlled Congress’ credit, earmark
spending has been cut by 50 percent since last year. Yet the same Democrats who
vowed to end the corruption brought on by this sort of spending requested that
companies in their districts receive money for questionable projects. According
to The New York Times, 21 members of Congress requested more than $20 million
dollars each for earmarks. Who made the most expensive earmark requests? Rep. John
P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and the chairman of the defense
appropriations subcommittee.
Although the next two members of Congress to top the list
for earmark requests were Republicans, Mr. Murtha’s requests are the most
disturbing. His earmark requests totaled $166 million, which is $49 million
more than the next House representative on the list, Republican Rep. C.W. Young
of Florida. Mr. Young’s requests, however, include those of lower-ranking
Republicans, and he makes personal contacts to each firm receiving earmarks to
see if its costs are justified. In other words, Mr. Young only wants projects
that are necessary to the Pentagon to be funded.
And to think, this money could be going toward making
military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan as effective and quick as Democrats
wish they were. With $166 million dollars, they could even make that nice
timetable for U.S. military retreat in Iraq that they keep talking about, maybe
even put it on some nice stationery.
The most disturbing thing about Mr. Murtha’s actions is that
not only does he love spending money, but also he opposes disclosing exactly
what that money is spent on. Mr. Murtha pushed strongly against legislation
that would disclose information about earmarks and then continued to request
earmarks that would benefit Johnstown, Pa., his hometown coincidentally.
According to the same article in The New York Times, Mr. Murtha even threatened
to block the earmark requests of two Republican representatives when they
questioned one of his own. Fortunately, Mr. Murtha recently gave a written
apology to one of those Republicans, Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers.
Of that $166 million in earmarks, $111 million would go to
companies that are closely aligned with Mr. Murtha. One of those companies, KDH
Defense Systems of Johnstown, uses a consulting firm, which just happens to employ
Mr. Murtha’s brother. Several of KDH’s projects aren’t even well-known — or for
that matter, known at all. The article also sites that those eight companies on
his earmark list use another lobbying firm, which has donated $58,600 to Mr.
Murtha’s campaign since 2005. In total, Mr. Murtha has received over $430,000
from companies that have benefited from his earmarks.
I understand that Mr. Murtha is not the only one doing this, but he is a shining example of how a Democratic Congress has failed us. It is not just the fiscal repercussions of unnecessary earmarks that make them awful, it is the fact that these earmarks buy votes for these leaders, and while Democrats and Republicans alike criticize the Bush administration for plunging us into a money-pit of a war, they spend the funds that are necessary for ending that war quickly. The Democratic spending in Washington is becoming a savage hypocrisy.
Andrew Traverse (traverse@wisc.edu)
is a freshman majoring in business.
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