Senators escape being pinned down on bill full of earmarks
Much has been made in Washington over the last week in the U.S. Senate about which Democrats and Republicans would vote for the $410 billion bill to fund government operations because it includes thousands of lawmakers’ pet projects.
Some senators like Republican John McCain have excoriated the expenditures, roughly $7.7 billion according to a count by the independent group Taxpayers for Common Sense, as unnecessary spending or destined for projects that should have been properly vetted through regular congressional review.
Others like Democratic Senator Tom Harkin have defended their projects, arguing that they have worthy goals or are needed to address a problem.
Missouri Republican Kit Bond, who has $86 million worth of earmarks in the legislation according to the taxpayer group, for a week batted away reporters’ questions about whether he would support or oppose the bill.
His Missouri colleague, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, told reporters last week she was unsure whether she would support passing the legislation. She has criticized the process for earmarks and had none in the measure but has said some projects can be worthwhile.
Alas, the public will never know how any of wavering senators voted on the bill because the Senate approved it by voice vote instead of a roll call tally, thereby alleviating the chances that they will be criticized for backing it.
Unless they decide to tell the public how they voted.
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.
Some earmarks can be beneficial to rebuilding the economy and increasing employment in different area of the country. If any earmark cannot do this then it should be shelved until some other time. We have to concentrate on rebuilding what we’ve let our representatives tear down. Filling the pockets of those that favors are owed to can wait.