Congress Gives Alaska "Ferry To Nowhere"

Washington Post: Senator Secures $20M Earmark For "Expeditionary Craft" To Rural Peninsula

(Washingtonpost.com)  This story was written by Elizabeth Williamson.

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Twice in the past two years, Alaska lawmakers were forced to abandon plans to build two "bridges to nowhere" costing hundreds of millions of dollars after Congress was embarrassed by public complaints over earmarks hidden in annual spending bills.

This year, Alaska Republicans Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens found another way to move cash to their state: Stevens secured more than $20 million for an "expeditionary craft" that will connect Anchorage with the windblown rural peninsula of Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Now what Alaska has, budget watchdogs contend, is a ferry to nowhere.

"Earmarks are a bipartisan affliction," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group that tracks the projects. "It would take leadership in both parties -- and a lot more shame -- to ever rein them in."

The $555 billion annual "omnibus" spending bill approved by Congress this week and the $459 billion defense bill passed last month collectively contain more than 11,000 earmarks, despite Democrats' vow to use their first year in the majority to slash the number of such pet projects.

The earmark tally did come down, budget watchdogs said, but the audacity of the requests is little reduced. Among routine requests for roads and dams, Taxpayers for Common Sense found $100,000 for signage in Los Angeles's fashion district, $9 million for "rural domestic preparedness" in Kentucky and $250,000 for a wine and culinary center in Prosser, Wash.

President Bush yesterday threatened to cancel thousands of the special projects, saying he has ordered White House budget director Jim Nussle to determine the extent of the president's authority to respond to what he called "wasteful spending" in the mammoth appropriations bill. Aides said that could include simply disregarding earmarks that were not included in binding legislative language.

Earmarks are a crucial way that lawmakers channel money back home for projects from community centers to water-treatment plants. Most members of Congress boast to constituents of their success in winning funding and say they know better than federal agencies what their districts need. A spokesman for Young said the Alaska ferry, for example, would drastically shorten the commute from the borough to Anchorage.

But over decades, earmarks have become magnets for some questionable spending requests, and the sheer number has given them a bad name.

The practice reached a high-water mark in 2005, the year of the first "bridge to nowhere" project, which would have linked the town of Ketchikan, on a southeastern Alaska island, to its airport on a nearby island.

Nussle, a former representative from Iowa who chaired the House Budget Committee, said the earmark explosion badly dented Republicans' and Bush's reputations among fiscal conservatives.

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Tonight on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric
Some troops have gone without equipment they need, but wait until you see what the military is wasting your money on. Sharyl Attkisson reports.

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"When I was budget chairman . . . we always held the top line. But what got us in trouble, I feel, are the earmarks," Nussle said in an interview. "People would come up to me at a town meeting, [and] they all want to know: 'How did you have money for this bridge or this rain forest or this cowgirl museum?' "

All told, this year's spending bills contain about 25 percent fewer earmarks than the 2006 appropriations, according to a tally by Citizens Against Government Waste. But this year, lawmakers generally did not count earmarks in bills composed almost solely of regional projects, such as the annual military construction bill.

Trimming earmarks by changing their definition "is like saying you're meeting your weight-loss goal by not counting your backside," Ellis said. "They've taken a step in the right direction, but if all we did was recalibrate the baseline and earmarks start their growth again, we haven't ccomplished much."

The House required lawmakers for the first time to sign their names to earmarks, identify the beneficiaries and locations, and certify that neither they nor their immediate families had a financial stake in the spending. But Democrats' good intentions came undone in the Senate, which failed to trim earmarks as severely and tinkered with the language of the rules, limiting disclosure to only the authors' names, Ellis said.

There are few signs so far that disclosure rules have dissuaded lawmakers from sponsoring earmarks, watchdogs said. They have only made them easier to trace.

The Taxpayers for Common Sense audit turned up, for example, that a handful of lawmakers continued this year to sponsor earmarks worth more than $10 million for ProLogic Inc., a West Virginia company under federal investigation for its role in receiving earmarked money.

The omnibus provides $126,000 for the National First Ladies' Library in Canton, Ohio, a favorite cause of the earmark's sponsor, Rep. Ralph Regula (R), whose wife founded the museum and whose daughter runs it. Regula has requested hundreds of thousands of federal dollars for the museum since 1991, when he persuaded the National Park Service to pay $1.1 million for its headquarters -- the girlhood home of Ida Saxton McKinley, the 25th first lady.

"Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have teamed up to waste taxpayer dollars on silly pork projects and egotistical projects named after themselves," said Brian Riedl, senior budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

The Alaska ferry project is one of the more expensive earmarks. Billed in Stevens's version of the legislation as an "expeditionary craft" to be used by the military, it is considered a passenger ferry by Young, according to his spokeswoman. It would follow roughly the same path as the second of the abandoned "bridges to nowhere." Stevens put the earmark that will fund the ferry into the defense appropriations bill, which Bush signed last month.

Young's son-in-law owns land in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, a remote region two hours by car from Anchorage. A ferry would shorten that commute to 15 minutes, making the borough valuable for housing development.

Meredith Kenny, a spokeswoman for Young, confirmed the family connection to the land. "Many Alaskans own land there," she said.

"They've been working on this since the mid-1990s," she said of the ferry project. "It's bipartisan, well wanted and needed. It's a bridge to growth and development."

Staff writer Jonathan Weisman contributed to this report.

[taotxzen]

Poll: Republican Approval of Bush%u2019s Handling of the Economy Plummets

Jon Ponder | Dec. 22, 2007

Republicans%u2019 approval of Pres. Bush%u2019s handling of the economy dropped 20 percentage points in the last month, according to American Research Group:

It suggests a wave of financial insecurity among Republican voters and could be a portentous sign of weakness inside Bush%u2019s base.

45 percent of Republicans disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the economy. In November, 25 percent of Republicans disapproved of Bush%u2019s handling of the economy.

That%u2019s quite a drop in a key indicator. It suggests a wave of financial insecurity among Republican voters and could be a portentous sign of weakness inside Bush%u2019s base.

Among all voters, 71 percent disapprove of Bush%u2019s handling of the economy, while 28 percent approve.

Overall, 32 percent approved of Bush%u2019s job performance versus 66 percent who disapproved.

[akdriver]

For all those in the lower 48 and the writer of this article, Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough are not that far from each other plus over half of Alaska population lives in anchorage with the rest living in wasilla - palmer and Fairbanks with one long road conecting. I uphold Ted stevens for bringing more money to the state, also we get paid every year to live here. So for all the haters get your facts straight before you judge.

[goldenkee]

If it''s not in the constitution, don''t allow money for it. Maybe Ron Paul is right?

[dennisd29]

The Matanuska encompasses the cites of Wasilla and Palmer. Those that reside there might take exception to supposedly being nowhere. These are bedroom communities of Anchorage Alaska. The commute by vehicle to downtown Anchorage, which is done by thousands each day, can take up to two hours depending on the weather. The ferry would cut commute time to less than an hour. Makes one wonder if Liz Williams bothered to do any research before writing the article.

Dennis
In Alaska

[dennisd29]

The Matanuska encompasses the cites of Wasilla and Palmer. Those that reside there might take exception to supposedly being nowhere. These are bedroom communities of Anchorage Alaska. The commute by vehicle to downtown Anchorage, which is done by thousands each day, can take up to two hours depending on the weather. The ferry would cut commute time to less than an hour. Makes one wonder if Liz Williams bothered to do any research before writing the article.

Dennis
In Alaska

[dennisd29]

The Matanuska encompasses the cites of Wasilla and Palmer. Those that reside there might take exception to supposedly being nowhere. These are bedroom communities of Anchorage Alaska. The commute by vehicle to downtown Anchorage, which is done by thousands each day, can take up to two hours depending on the weather. The ferry would cut commute time to less than an hour. Makes one wonder if Liz Williams bothered to do any research before writing the article.

Dennis
In Alaska

[sgtrds]

The Democrats PROMISED the American people that they would cut pork spending to win their majority.

We have seen the balloon of another promise pop. Say goodbye to your majority in 2008!

HA HA HA HA HA!

Posted by SBB2211 at 09:13 PM : Dec 21, 2007

Um, in case you didn''t notice, the as*shole spending the pork in this story is a republican, not a democrat.

[missingamerica]

Actually, Stevens is just planning ahead.

His goal, of course, is to get all the oil in Alaska burnt up as quickly as possible. As that helps accelerate global warming, he''ll buy up land at the termini of the various "transport to nowhere (currently)" systems he''s having you pay for now.

Then, when global warming really kicks in and vast areas of Alaska see their hardiness zones transformed from 3b to 5b, his family will be sitting fat and happy with a lock on all the seaside land that is fit for building luxury vacation condos on for the well-to-do...

[radiob-2009]

On this ferry to nowhere will the theme song be Lust for Life?

Here comes johnny yen again
With the liquor and drugs
And the flesh machine
Hes gonna do another strip tease.
Hey man, whered ya get that lotion?
Ive been hurting since Ive bought the gimmick
About something called love
Yeah, something called love.
Well, thats like hypnotizing chickens.

Well, Im just a modern guy
Of course, Ive had it in the ear before.
I have a lust for life
cause of a lust for life.

Im worth a million in prizes
With my torture film
Drive a gto
Wear a uniform
All on a government loan.
Im worth a million in prizes
Yeah, Im through with sleeping on the sidewalk
No more beating my brains
No more beating my brains
With liquor and drugs
With liquor and drugs.

Well, Im just a modern guy
Of course, Ive had it in my ear before
Well, Ive a lust for life (lust for life)
cause of a lust for life (lust for life, oooo)
I got a lust for life (oooo)
Got a lust for life (oooo)
Oh, a lust for life (oooo)
Oh, a lust for life (oooo)
A lust for life (oooo)
I got a lust for life (oooo)
Got a lust for life.

Well, Im just a modern guy
Of course, Ive had it in my ear before
Well, Ive a lust for life
cause Ive a lust for life.

How fitting for all of our politicians.

[brianbwb-2009]

Actually, if you google "cruise to nowhere", you will find that it is a marketing name referring to boats that take rich high rollers offshore for a night of gambling. These cruises are very popular in South east Asia, as there are stiff penalties for illegal gambling.

The term "ferry to nowhere", as the Ms williamson''s editors call it, is most likely, if it even gets purchased, to end up as an offshore gambling casino.