BREAKING NEWS

Well, this is sort of on a lighter note, because I happened to be browsing other articles at the Register’s site and saw this listed in today’s headlines: “Toilet explodes at East High School this afternoon.”  Slow news day?

Add comment December 14th, 2006

Bridges to Nowhere: The Other Other White Meat

I don’t know how many of you are on Jim Nussle’s email list, but yesterday’s edition nearly put me into a coma—its noxious photos, mind numbing stories of lemonade stands and lunches, and exceptional ability to kill the interesting somehow combine the worst aspects of a PowerPoint presentation with granny’s grand canyon slide show. In short—it is an unholy alliance between boredom and idiocy.

Of course, it does provide a few opportunities for fun.

“Jim’s Journal,” as it’s called, tells us that Jim is doing what every other self-respecting candidate in the state does this time of year—he’s spending significant time at the internationally-acclaimed Iowa State fair. Of course, Jim has something else in common with too many politicians—wherever he is, he seems to be at the same tricks.

Indeed, true to form, Jim did what he does best. He served up pork.

Heck, Jim’s been doing it for years.

As House Budget Chairman he presided over the evaporation (er, trickledown?) of hundreds of billions of dollars. Where’d it all go? Sure, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans played a huge part, as did Halliburton contracts. But another often overlooked culprit was the astronomical growth in pork barrel spending that picked up speed in the early 90’s and only accelerated under Nussle’s tenure as HBC.

Now, one can’t blame all pork on Nussle—Congress is stuffed with chronic earmarkers like a pig with an apple down its throat—but when Jim first got to the hill in 1991, spending on pet project earmarks totaled 3.1 billion dollars. In 2006, that number was 29.3 billion dollars. In his five years as House Budget Chairman, pork barrel spending went up in every one. In 2001, when he took control of the Committee, earmarks hovered around 7,000. By 2005, that number had nearly doubled.

And earmarks under the reign of king Nussle have been especially egregious. According to the conservative Citizens Against Government Waste, this year’s budget includes:

$13,500,000 for the International Fund for Ireland, which helped finance the World Toilet Summit; $6,435,000 for wood utilization research; $1,000,000 for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative; and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C.

Thankfully, Nussle’s reign in the House is over. Here’s to making sure we don’t let him do for Iowa what he did in Congress. Iowans—let’s not be what we eat.

P.S. Do us a favor Jim—keep the “journal” to yourself. Diaries are self-indulgent.

8 comments August 12th, 2006