Republican Transportation Bill Moves Your Money to Pork

Republicans talk small government, but when it comes to their actions, the Republicans’ small talk turns into big government waste.

Consider this year’s transportation bill, written and passed into law by the Republicans. The Republican bill contains a record number of unnecessary pork barrel projects, far more than were ever put into legislation by any Democratic Congress. In 1991, the Democratic Congress passed funding for 538 pork barrel special transportation infrastructure projects. That sounds like a lot, but this year, even the conservative Cato Institute agrees that the Republican Congress passed funding for 6,371 pork barrel special transportation projects. That’s twelve times as many as the Democrats asked for. Has America’s transportation infrastructure become twelve times as expensive over the last fourteen years? No, it’s just that since the Republicans grabbed control of congress, the corrupt practice of wasteful transportation spending has expanded by 1,200 percent.

What kind of wasteful special projects has the Republican Congress forced on the American taxpayer? Well, there’s a bridge in Alaska that the Republicans want to sell to you that serves as a great example. Alaska Republican senator Ted Stevens inserted millions of dollars in federal government funding for a new bridge in Alaska that will equal the size of the Golden Gate Bridge. Where does this huge new bridge go to? It goes from the small city of Ketchikan to the little island of Gravina. Gravina is inhabited by 50 people.

Of course, it would be unfair to say that Republican senator Ted Stevens got the American taxpayer to fork out millions of dollars just so that 50 Alaskans on Gravina island could drive on a bridge instead of taking a ferry. No, there are other uses for the bridge. That huge bridge, paid for by public money, will enable big trucks owned by logging companies and mining companies to haul timber and ore from Gravina Island to the mainland. The companies that profit from this deal were big donors to the Ted Stevens re-election campaign.

That kind of corruption is not what the Republicans promised when they took over Congress in 1994. They promised to conduct the business of the Congress with honesty and integrity. Writing huge checks of taxpayer money to pay for big government programs that benefit only corporate campaign donors may be what the Republicans regard as honesty and integrity, but where I come from, people have different ideas. If the Republicans won’t run the Congress in a clean way, then it’s time for American voters to clean out the Congress of the corrupt Republican influence. We get that chance in less than 18 months, with nationwide congressional elections. Let’s hope that the American public is paying attention.