October 19, 2005
The Coburn Amendment
For those who are unaware, the Coburn Amendment is a Senate issue where Tom Coburn is trying to cancel the “Bridge to Nowhere” project, and divert those funds towards replacing the bridge between Slidell and New Orleans in Louisiana.
I don’t often link to the big guy, because everyone else does anyway, but I thought this was a particularly insightful thought:
The more I think about it, the more I think that the Coburn Amendment is a big deal. It’s setting the precedent whereby members of Congress go after each other’s taxpayer-shafting pork projects rather than turning a blind eye and engaging in logrolling.
It seems to me that this makes it an especially good project for bloggers to get behind, and to encourage their senators to support. I expect that quite a few people in Congress are worried about this, and will be trying to ensure that it does a quiet death rather than coming to the floor for a vote. I think the country is better off with transparency, and I’d like to hear any Senator who opposes this measure explain why he or she favors funding a bridge that could buy a personal jet for every inhabitant of Gravina Island, instead of spending the money on fixing ruined bridges that people actually use in Louisiana. They won’t want to talk about that, of course, but they need to be asked.
It’s one thing to say that an earmark is pork. But when we have one Senator with the– ahem– cojones to try and take funds from someone else’s earmark, this deserves our support. If we want to see some real spending restraint, we need to help the idea that spending is not a smash & grab at a limitless trough, it’s a competitive enterprise and some projects have higher priority than others. If elected officials start eyeing each others pork rather than our wallets, it can only be a good thing.
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