Group: Nearly $20B In Pork In Fiscal '09

CBS Evening News: Citizens Against Gov't Waste Sepaks Out Against Money For Oyster Habitats And Honeybees

(CBS)  Consumers may not be in a spending mood, but members of Congress certainly are. And they're spending on pork.

A government watchdog group put out a report Tuesday that says what it calls wasteful spending is up $2 billion this year, as CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.

From almost $8 million to restore oyster habitats to perennial research on blueberries and honeybees, Congress' pork-barrel spending is out-of-the-park. (In fact, there's even $3.8 million dollars for Detroit's old Tiger Stadium.)

The report from Citizens Against Government Waste says wasteful spending topped $19.6 billion in fiscal 2009.

"You hear Washington officials say we all have to tighten our belts, we all have to sacrifice" said David Williams, vice president of Citizens Against Government Waste. "Well, yeah, but the politicians aren't sacrificing."

That means projects like turning the decaying Tiger Stadium into a park and business center. Money is given outside the regular budget, without the normal public review, often benefiting special interests or campaign contributors.

There's $1.9 million for a water taxi at the abandoned "Pleasure Beach" in Connecticut. Another $4.5 million benefits the timber industry, funding things like new uses for particleboard and plywood.

But Kansas may have the winner for the most self-absorbed earmark.

"Sen. Pat Roberts - $2 million for the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program," says Williams.

Top spenders overall are Democrat Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii in the House with $256 million in earmarks and Republican Thad Cochran of Mississippi in the Senate with $653 million.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who promised major earmark reform, wasn't available for an interview. But her office says Democrats have provided historic transparency and accountability.

[fishintxs]

Is there another kind of history other that "past history?" And no, you're wrong -- government expenditure is a well proven technique to stimulate a stagnate economy. It is taught in every economics survey course everywhere.
well it did not help in 1928, do you remember the deepression,no, you will very soon. we are about to face the greatest depression of all time.

[taryder]

I will tell WHERE the MONEY IS GOING........Billions & Billions to SUPPORT THREE!!! WARS UNDER Obama, the candidate who was going to start stopping the war in Iraq his first day in office........IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN & PAKISTAN............And don't think for a moment that there will not be repercussions in regards to the UN Racism Conference, and Obama's stand with Israel.

By the way, let's bring back DEMOCRACY to the DNC!!!.......The DNC has become NOT MUCH DIFFERENT than the GOP.......
ALWAYS a KING! somewhere.......GWB, now Obama

[daveypat]

The environment is not pork especially honeybees. They are disappearing at a phenominal rate and they are a major pollinator of our plants for food. Not only that but they also provide natural sugars (honey). Oyster habitat is as just as important. Can we not see how this research is important to each and every one of us. If earmarks do not benefit us directly then people freak out. Not all ear marks are bad...they just just need to be overseen more closely.
One person's pork may be another person's prize and joy. Like in Iowa where they are talking about funding for why pigs smell. Believe me if you have ever lived in Iowa like I have, trying to find a way to subside the smell will be beneficial for all of Iowa and other local agriculture areas. This would be a positive step to the lifestyle and wellbeing of Iowa with pig farms throughout the state. For Iowa this is important but for someone in Florida they may not care. There has to be some balance but to say it is all pork. Get real and just because you do not benefit directly...stop being so selfish and think about someone else.

[inketolstoy]

You made the wrong assumption, mcthreeteeth. This is just proof that when you have a smaller membership (the senate) you get your hands on large ramounts of money. Senators look at themselves as the aristocrats of American politics and reward themselves accordingly. A senator (repub or dem) gets more of the pie than a representative because it is a smaller club divying up the money. A pig is a pig; it doesn't matter if he/she wears a elephant or donkey on the lapel.

[cdegolier]

Pelosi and earmark reform, yeah that will happen. After this change all I will have left is change. Thank you, and God bless the democrats. Any money I might have left please add to the $600 million to rebuild gaza strip.

[brianbwb-2009]

Posted by TheMasses01

I'm Impressed, your first comment directed towards me, and already you've run out of logic, and resort to lame attempt at insult instead of logic.

It usually takes a few exchanges before the failed neos give up and resort to that.

[WITHINMEANS]

Line item veto anyone?

Even better would have each spending item introduced as it's own spending bill. I wonder how many pet projects would even make it to a vote.

[TheMasses01]

I think a lot of the money is well spent and helps the economy in the long run.
Posted by gary4books
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One can only hope (hmmm-where have I heard that before?)
But past history dictates the stimulus package will not work.

[gary4books]

The thing I notice is that many of these are useful projects. We do need to save oysters in the bay and it is important to have safe nuts and the bees are in trouble. The Washington Post used to sneer at all of the texas water projects, but the DC area is much wetter and they never could understand what a water project meant in dry west Texas.

I think a lot of the money is well spent and helps the economy in the long run.

[TheMasses01]

"...Hey brianbwb-2009....Your personal attack is uncalled for but it sounds like you're frustrated. You must be a liberal living off of welfare. What's wrong, didn't you see the increase in your foodstamps????" Posted by enjoylife63
-----------------------------------------
You got that right - what a loser.
Probably an obese, welfare leach eating cheetos all day on a stolen computer.
What a cancer and drain on society.

[rational_1]

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who promised major earmark reform, wasn't available for an interview. But her office says Democrats have provided historic transparency and accountability."

Big deal - the big problem is that she clearly has no idea where the brakes are on this runaway train. And apparently no real interest in finding them.

[BaselessCritique]

Analysis Please! I have no doubt that there is tremendous waste in government in the form of poorly-prioritized spending, which is really what we?re talking about here. At issue seems to be the expenditure of money on programs with little or no benefit to the general welfare.

The press regularly gins up this type of ?tax-and-spend? hysteria piece. It?s a tried and true formula for generating words. It begins by finding the most outrageous example of government waste. Does anyone remember the $800 military toilet seat from the 80s? Then the writer must run down the litany of unconscionable waste, all played out against the sincere outrage of some ?mad-as-hell? politico. The dispirited reader is left, in the end, to reaffirm her worst feelings about the inability of government to manage the affairs of state.

Yet something has changed in the telling of these stories of woe. We?ve gotten lazy. The politicos who grandstand on the issue have gotten lazy. The reporters who pander to the hysteria of the moment have gotten lazy. The public who has with the actual interest in good government and the need for insightful reporting have gotten lazy.

Just think about presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal and his ill-conceived response to the current president?s address to Congress. In his speech Jindal points to volcano research as dispositive proof of the fundamental irresponsibility of the current administration. Unfortunately for Jindal, he is exposed as a buffoon two weeks later when Mount Redoubt (a volcano) in Alaska erupts. We find that volcano research really is a good thing, not just a make-work project for geologists. This science provides us with tools to predict when volcano will erupt, which in turn allows us to reroute air traffic and otherwise protect the poor souls who live in the shadow of volcanoes, which exist up and down the west coast of our country as well as Hawaii.

Fast forward 30 days. Now we hear that these ninnies in Washington have the ridiculous idea to spend a few dollars on honeybees. What morons! What profligate dim-wits. Why on earth would we spend two cents on studying the honeybee?

Well, here is why. Without the honeybee there is no United States as we know it. The modest honeybee is largely responsible for pollination of most food-crop plants. Without the honeybee, no plants. Without the plants, no agriculture. Without agriculture, guess what collapses next. If you said the U.S. economy, give yourself partial marks. No, what collapses next are the very creatures which depend on plant life to sustain their own existence, creatures with faces, creatures with names, creatures that pay taxes to bring democracy to Arab states and to fund ridiculous agricultural research here at home.

The lack of analysis in this argument and in this story is all the more surprising because stories of bee-colony collapse have been in the news for a few years now.
So what kind or politico, what kind of reporter, what kind of person would, in times of actual crisis, when there are real problems to solve, when there are real villains to be uncloaked, would take the opportunity to kick around the tireless hard-working honeybee? I ask you.

[tibu987]

It seems that President Obama is learning the ropes as to how things work in Washington.
One cannot get anything done unless you add some pork .
It seems to me that until our pols can work together for the betterment of the entire country, things will never change.
I won't hold my breath waiting for that type of real patriotism.

[brianbwb-2009]

"...Tax payers are having trouble just making ends meet so we will take their hard earned money and spend it on an F-ing water taxi and turning tigers stadium into a park. This s..t needs to stop. All pork barrel spending needs to end." Posted by endurorob

True, but the problem occurs when one tries to define "pork".

Take tiger Stadium, for example, it has been abandoned in favor of a new modern baseball stadium, the structure being so old that it is unsound, and just so happens to be on public land. Would you leave it to simply crumble, creating a hazard, and further blighting an already struggling part of town? Or just give our land to some private concern to be turned into unaffordable condominiums useless to the population?

And a "water taxi" is most likely otherwise called a "ferry", and if it helps transport people across a body of water, does it not serve the public interest, and at a potentially cheaper price for the consumer than if it was owned by a private, profit-driven concern?
Contrary to their assertions, privatizing everything does not work, we see daily examples of how business is even more corrupt than government, yet the neos still worship at their altar.

Without doubt there is some serious pork going on, like bridges to nowhere, and the proven failure, the military's Osprey tilt-a-chopper, and the unaccounted-for tons of money thrown at war profiteers, but it seems that whenthe GOP come across a program that benefits the non-rich, they call it pork in order to drum up opposition, but as long as the pork comes to them, they have no problem with it, no matter how ridiculous it is.

Doesn't Bobby Jindral's recent idiocy, calling volcano monitoring a waste, just weeks before the Alaska volcano erupted, teach us anything?

[brianbwb-2009]

"...Hey brianbwb-2009....Your personal attack is uncalled for but it sounds like you're frustrated. You must be a liberal living off of welfare. What's wrong, didn't you see the increase in your foodstamps????" Posted by enjoylife63

While I am a liberal, I have never collected foodstamps or welfare, and as for the personal attack, it seems to me that someone who makes a comment about Democrats or liberals without reading the part of the article that shows the largest recipient of the government's largesse is a Republican, seeks therefore to simply besmirch one side of the political spectrum (the opposite side of their own), while ignoring the fact that the most egregious abusers of the situation are in fact from their own party.

Such people deserve a bit of a personal attack, the intentionally ignorant make such fun targets.

[TheMasses01]

lol!
Posted by SueziQ
------------------------------
Why do you hate America so?
How many times did you vote for Bush Skippy?






lol

[tonysp2]

First, Republicans must admit that Bushonomics was a complete failure. Bushonomics was the strategy where the rich pay less of a percentage of taxes that everyone else, and there is no regulation on wrongdoers. The Bush economic collapse of October, 2008 discredited this strategy. Until the Republicans can come up with a strategy that replaces their failed strategy they are just blowing wind.

[SueziQ]

It's so nice that after 8 years of record deficits Rushpublicans are suddenly born again fiscal conservatives.

Or are they just playing more partisan games?

70% of the national debt was run up under just 3 Republican Presidents.









lol!

[endurorob]

Tax payers are having trouble just making ends meet so we will take their hard earned money and spend it on an F-ing water taxi and turning tigers stadium into a park. This s..t needs to stop. All pork barrel spending needs to end.

[brianbwb-2009]

Posted by YouCantBSirius

You must be a neocon-derthal if...

...you just love stealing other people's money

...you love it when you hear someone yell about a wart because it has the letters "war" in it

...you think big business knows better how to spend the people's money than the people do

...you believe Jan 30, 1933 should be celebrated like the Fourth of July

...you hate to admit that Obama is absolutely right when he refers to tax money as an "investment"

...you disagree that executing the unborn is the most heinous and cowardly criminal act ever devised by a morally destitute society, but don't mind it after they are born.

...you think if the US backs every brutal dictator in the world with money and guns, peace will reign supreme

...you believe the wisest way to spend the workingman's tax money is to give it to corrupt corporations

...you think fascism is the perfect way to govern society, even though it hasn't worked anywhere else in the world (no one wonders why.)

...you consider limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, and Jindral the "shining stars" of American politics

...your delight in embracing George Bush as president is only exceeded by your adulation for Reagan

...you're sure if we just keep printing more money and giving it, without oversight, to corporations that did nothing to earn it, and whose upper management even stole what they did have, we'll soon buy our way out ot the present economic crisis