Pork Barons' Last Gasp

Just when you thought this "lame-duck" session of Congress couldn't get any more absurd, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, unveiled on Tuesday a $1.108 trillion omnibus spending package loaded with earmarks. It most closely resembles the last gasp of the congressional pork barons, drawn up by people utterly tone-deaf to what voters were trying to tell them Nov. 2.

It's not that a resolution to wrap up the 2011 budget wouldn't be a good idea. Congress has not passed appropriations bills that were supposedly due last fall and has funded ongoing government operations through what are called Continuing Resolutions, which maintain the previous year's spending levels for relatively short periods. So technically, the government runs out of money on Saturday.

Most observers had expected the problem to be solved with a Continuing Resolution already passed by the House that includes no earmarks and caps discretionary spending at $1.089 trillion, the same as fiscal 2010 and hardly a model of fiscal discipline.

Ironically, the Inouye bill includes earmarks sought by legislators who have since sworn off the hard stuff, including Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

A preliminary analysis by the bipartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense found some 6,600 earmarks worth about $8 billion, compared to $10 billion in earmarks in the 2010 (Citizens Against Government Waste defines earmarks as spending designated toward projects the agency in question had not requested.)

The Inouye omnibus includes, for example, $450 million to continue an alternate-engine program for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which the Pentagon says it doesn't want or need.

There's $18 million for nonprofits associated with recently deceased Democrats Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. John Murtha, and $6 million for a rural Iowa school program coincidentally named after Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin. And there's that $650,000 for a genetic technology center at the University of Kentucky requested by GOP leader McConnell, who now says he supports a two-year moratorium on earmarks and opposes this bill.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint says he will invoke senatorial privilege to require that the entire 1,924-page bill be read aloud before it can be voted on. Whatever it takes to stop this monstrosity.

REPRINTED FROM THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER.

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