HOW SHE SEES IT Pork from Congress causes heart burn

By BRONWYN LANCE CHESTER
VIRGINIAN-PILOT
It's the days of swine and roses in Washington.
As the weeks go by, more pork surfaces in the $388 billion catch-all congressional spending bill approved just before Thanksgiving.
Sure, by now you've heard of the $25,000 vacuumed from our wallets to study mariachi music in Nevada. Or the $800,000 for soybean rust research in Iowa, a state every presidential aspirant from both parties is keen to court.
You've probably even heard of the $1.5 million in taxpayer funds headed to Missouri to establish an archive at that state's historical society for retiring Democratic U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt. (Talk about ensuring your own legacy.)
But the lard just keeps on rolling out. And many of these oinkers appear to be orphans, as no one knows -- or, more like it, no one's telling -- who slipped these budget busters into the 14-inch-thick, 1,690-page bill.
Did taxpayers really need to spend $250,000 for asparagus technology and production in Washington state?
Or $150,000 for the Coca-Cola Space Science Center at Columbus State University in Georgia? I'm all for "young astronaut" activities, which the center's Web site promotes, but not on the taxpayers' dime. Besides, $150,000 is pocket lint for Coca-Cola.
Then there's the $75,000 for the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton, Wis., which sounds vaguely like something from a Monty Python sketch.
And $100,000 for a weather museum in Punxsutawney, Pa. What's on display, stuffed groundhogs?
In a spending bill gone wild, I wonder if it eluded irony-impaired members of Congress that they'd allotted $50,000 for feral hogs in Missouri. Or, best of all, $1 million to the Missouri Pork Producers Federation to convert hog manure to energy.
If only voters could magically do the same.
I could go on -- really, I could; there are 11,772 such goodies in this bill, totaling $15.8 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a bipartisan watchdog group.
After effectively raising the nation's credit limit by $800 billion almost three weeks ago, Congress made a big show of tightening its belt in this bill. Politicians bragged that the nine appropriations bills rolled into a single mammoth piece of legislation grew by "only" 2 percent.
But any credibility lawmakers may have won for trying to hold down spending went straight out the window after this pork-barrel abomination came to light.
'Held the line'
According to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, "I'm very proud of the fact that we held the line and made Congress make choices and set priorities, because it follows our philosophy."
Some philosophy.
The very folks who constantly remind us we're at war and to support the troops are the same ones wasting taxpayer dollars that could buy our soldiers better equipment and body armor. Instead, money is going to potato storage in Wisconsin or the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty. A few hundred thousand here and there amounts to budget dust in a $388 billion bill. But budget dust adds up. To $15.8 billion, to be precise.
Congress must end this now-yearly ritual of procrastination, rolling spending bills together and passing them in one lard-filled swoop instead of voting on each in turn.
Apparently, no one reminded these guys that America is already more than $400 billion in the red and fighting an expensive war. By ignoring that inconvenient fact, Congress violated the sacrosanct First Rule of Holes: When you're in one, stop digging.
One politician's pork is another's bacon. I don't doubt that $400,000 for a program to help at-risk students in Newport News, Va., or $800,000 to fund a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in San Diego are worthwhile projects in someone's eyes.
But funding them is not the federal government's -- nor the taxpayers' -- responsibility.
X Bronwyn Lance Chester is a columnist for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.