If you have ever wondered why you never seem to see your tax dollars at work, don’t worry, they’re working, just for somebody else.
Remember the big tizzy a couple of years ago about Alaska Congressman Don Young’s “Bridge to Nowhere,” $223 million in federal money? How about the $50 million for Iowa’s indoor rain forest?
Yet last year, nobody bucked about Senator Max Baucus’s, D-Mont., $250 million earmark, putting taxpayers on the hook to buy overpriced Plum Creek land. So the Forest Service can lock it up and burn it down? Not even a bridge?
Congressman Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., recently posted a list of funding requests made to his office (http://www.house.gov/rehberg/fy2010requests.pdf). The list is 63 glorious pages, 335 requests, a billion dollars – more than even the $870 million in Montana’s “share” of the federal stimulus. So much to write about, so little space …
The “diversity” of those squealing for handouts is impressive. Lust for lard is clearly a bipartisan, public-private partnership. Here’s some of the greasiest:
The Billings Clinic wants $500,000 for “controlled access technology” (security). Here’s a million for Americans with Disabilities Act compliance for Madison County’s courthouse. I expected Madison County would want a bridge.
Montana Aerospace Development Association in Butte, mission being to “develop a significant aerospace industrial sector,” wants $1 million for law enforcement training on “how to respond to situations with an active shooter.” Um, bomb them?
Then there is the infrastructure wish list. Every fire department’s dog seems to want a new fire hall, but doesn’t want to pay for it. Kalispell is after $11 million for sewer. Irrigators in the Bitterroot, all 1,375 of them, want $4.8 million to replace Siphon Number One, built in 1909. Stevensville, $5.7 million for replacing its 1909 water system. 1909 must have been quite a year.
Um, didn’t anyone involved see these problems coming and budget for them? No. So they want Ole and Inge in Minneapolis to bail them out. But their bridge fell down, remember?
Then there are the business proposals, most having to do with military voodoo. An outfit in Townsend wants $4 million so the military can buy its unconventional ATVs. I like ATVs, but does Uncle Sam really want or need them? And what’s this 10 million bucks for research into “low-cost titanium” extraction methods? Isn’t funding available in the private sector? If not, then why not?
My environmentalist friends have their hands out, too. Between three land trusts, The Conservation Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and Trust for Public Land, is around $20 million this year to “preserve” even more land. Remember the $8 million earmark for buying off the New World mine claims I wrote about last time? It’s in there. Why don’t they get their members to buy all this stuff? They don’t have to!
I shudder to think there are 435 distinguished Congressmen with equally long wish lists from their constituents, plus 100 esteemed Senators with even longer lists. And a whole squad of Congressional staffers who will be tasked with sorting through it all for “merit” – meaning what earmarks will return the most votes, or which rejections will annoy the fewest contributors, and who’s up for reelection.
After rooting through Rehberg’s list, one must ask how many of these requests are truly the responsibility of the federal government, and how many could be better dealt with closer to home, or by the private sector.
Shouldn’t federal funding from federal taxes be focused on national needs? Shouldn’t state and local needs should be addressed with, yep, state and local taxes? If private-for-profit propopoals can’t get private funding, should they get public money?
Perhaps if Americans asked less from the Feds, or government in general, each of us could better afford to deal with our own genuine needs out of our own pockets. But I fear we are becoming a nation of pigs. Now, everyone knows what happens to the first pig that backs away from the trough. But when everyone’s snarfing from the trough, and nobody’s filling it – what happens to all the pigs?