big labor loves the pork

1.8 billion dollars was still spent in fiscal year 2006 on earmarks and pork in labor appropriations bills alone. Senator DeMint’s call for an earmark moratorium, among other things, increased visibility of the pervasive earmark problem in the 110th session. Despite this increased awareness of the earmark issue, however, appropriators still pigged out at the trough, spending a total of one billion dollars this year in labor bills alone. The attitude toward spending that has swept over the House and Senate in the last decade is abysmal. Senator Harkin, for example, long a staunch proponent of earmarks, said in a recent interview with the New York Times that he views Congressional earmarks as “Congressional directed spending.” Fiscal responsibility—what should be the norm—is now the anomaly. If you’re a Senator or Congressmen who cares about the taxpayer dollar more than your bid for reelection, you are now the outsider. Somehow I see money for research in the science department at the University of Southern Mississippi wholly foreign to labor issues facing the United States. I feel the same way about the Bibliographical Society of America. If they have a strong case for an allocation of taxpayer dollars, they will present their compelling case to Congress, and Congress will vote openly on the bill. My love for writing “works cited” pages cannot override my love for sound fiscal spending. Finally, I doubt that Senator Harkin’s love for writing bibliographies trumps mine either; however, his love of pork and thus reelection certainly does.