Pigs rolled out to protest government spending as Tax Day approaches
With the April 15 tax day right around the corner, the taxpayer watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste rolled out a couple of pigs to press their case against $19.6 billion in lawmakers’ pet projects for the 2009 fiscal year, calling them “re-election currency.”
While the pigs Dudley and Minnie snorted around the luxurious National Press Club (better digs than they’re probably used to), the organization rolled out its annual “Pig Book” decrying the projects as pork-barrel government spending that did not get proper or public scrutiny or vetting by Congress.
“Pork has been used by both parties as re-election currency,” said David Williams, vice president of policy at the Citizens Against Government Waste. “There is no moral high ground here when it comes to pork-barrel spending because most of Congress partakes in this process.”
The group highlighted more than 10,000 projects stuffed in the 2009 annual spending bills and while there were fewer of the so-called earmarks than in fiscal 2008, the money in 2009 was 14 percent higher than the previous year.
Many of the projects were already highlighted earlier this year during the debate over a $410 billion omnibus spending bill, including some $1.8 million to study pig odor and manure management.
The group also decried some $465 million for an alternative engine project for the Joint Strike Fighter, which they argued would not save any money.
President Barack Obama has promised to cut down on the pet projects, and last week requested Congress to keep them out of the $83.4 billion he requested to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that was met with skepticism.
Senator Harkin defends earmark to research pig odor
Some might think it would be hard to defend spending $1.8 million on researching how to deal with the odor from pig manure, but Senator Tom Harkin found it pretty easy to do.
Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, succeeded in getting the funds included in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill that is pending in the Senate, drawing protests from some like Senator John McCain that it is wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.
“I’m sure that David Letterman will probably be talking about it and Jay Leno will be talking about it, we’ve got $1.8 million to study why pigs smell,” Harkin said on the Senate floor after an amendment was introduced aimed at killing the funding.
“People constantly complain, with good reason, about big farms, factory farms and their environmental impacts so it makes good sense to fund research that addresses how people can live in our small towns and communities and livestock producers can do the same and co-exist,” he said.
Harkin argued that the money was to replace funds that had been zeroed out for the Agricultural Research Service in then-President George W. Bush’s budget last year. Conveniently, the ARS happens to work out of Iowa.
He noted that some 20 million hogs live in his state, one-fourth of the U.S. total, and while farmers have been encouraged to use the manure as fertilizer, that can present problems such as fouling streams and waterways and sending odors far afield.
“It is critical to our state’s economy but as the demand has grown for pork and as we produce more pork, you can understand that the management problems of what to do with the waste has become very serious, not only for the odor problems but the waste itself,” he said, adding that the research would examine the food swine eat and the management of what is done with the waste.
Let’s put it this way. It’s a drop in the bucket in comparison to our spending to be sure, but as a nation, we’re spending 2x ($3.69 trillion) as much as we are taking in ($2.15 trillion in taxes). The question is if you spent more than you made every year, would you charge your share of the cost of finding out why pigs smell on a credit card? Would you expect everyone to?
If it’s truly a problem, and you’d be willing to spend your own money on it, wouldn’t some company come up with a product that they could sell you?
Or, (not to impute motives) are you willing to spend other people’s money and not your own? Would you go to other parts of the country and convince other hard working families to take food out of their children’s mouths to figure this out?
If not, maybe it’s not that important.
I teabagged with my Mom today for at least an hour.
Viva la revolution! To the barricades!