Pet projects
Congress recently passed a $388 billion omnibus spending bill stuffed with pork. This might have you wondering, what’s in it for you. How about $1.5 million for the Fayette County Business Park? Or $2 million toward constructing the Uniontown-to-Brownsville link of the Mon-Fayette Expressway? Or $750,000 for a chest pain center for Uniontown Hospital? Or $50,000 to something called the American Society of Educators Teacher Development to help coordinate training and professional development for teachers throughout U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster’s Ninth Congressional District?
These are just some of the projects that have come to our attention via press releases by Shuster and our other congressman, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, in the immediate aftermath of the 3,000-page bill.
Who knows yet what lurks on all those pages. As columnist Deroy Murdock writes on the Opinion Page today, Congress took “an Olympic-class dive into the pork barrel totaling some $16 billion. No bacon was left behind.”
We don’t question whether the money targeted for Fayette County will be put to good use. Any help in expanding infrastructure into the rapidly developing business park can only help our local economy by creating more jobs, where hypothetically the workers will render a cut of their taxes back to the federal government. So consider this one an investment.
As major supporters of the Mon-Fayette Expressway we can’t but cheer for every hard-fought dollar that goes into the project.
And with nearly half the 50,000 patients who show up each year at the Uniontown Hospital complaining of chest pain, any help in quicker diagnoses and treatments bodes well for all of us.
We don’t begrudge one dime going toward these projects, even if they fall within the vat of lard dished up by lawmakers. The problem is that every penny of that fat can be justified by someone, somewhere. Even the million-dollar wild shrimp initiative has its constituency.
The problem with pork is that projects are not judged on their merit. Rather the amount of money depends on favors. How much in favor one’s congressional representative is viewed and how much favor one’s congressional representative views projects competing for his attention.
The money is doled out to House members as rewards for seniority, power and voting the right way, so that they can go home and brag about how hard they have worked for their districts.
This has become the way of Washington, and despite rhetoric about killer pork, it won’t change, not as long as the people back home are well fed.