(No more) Porker of the Month
By: BJ Lawson
Ever seen those nifty electronic signs on Chapel Hill bus stops that show you when the next bus will arrive? Ever wonder how much they cost, and who paid for them?
The answer is they cost about $1 million for 14 bus stops, of which the federal government paid $750,000 via a Congressional earmark from our own Rep. David Price. Indeed, Rep. Price earned Citizens Against Government Waste’s Porker of the Month award for this particular earmark.
Now I know what you’re thinking: “That’s small potatoes. Compared with over $40 trillion in unfunded liabilities in our social insurance programs, don’t the good folks in Chapel Hill deserve to know when the next bus will be arriving?”
Well, it’s the principle of the thing. While earmarks are a relatively small percentage of federal spending, there’s no excuse for using the federal budget as a trough where folks go to swap favors and buy votes. I’m reminded of a classic story from earlier in our Republic:
In 1827, the famous Colonel Davy Crockett was elected to the House of Representatives. During his first term of office, a $10,000 relief bill for the widow of a naval officer was proposed. Colonel Crockett rose in stern opposition and gave the following eloquent rebuttal to the bill:
“We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not attempt to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.”
After he sat down and a vote was taken, instead of unanimous approval as had been assumed, the measure failed with only a few votes in support of it. (Legend has it that Crockett, one of the poorest members of the House at that time, was the only one to contribute substantially to a private charitable fund for the widow.)
In pursuit of a Constitutional federal government, I have signed the FreedomWorks Earmark Pledge. It’s simply a statement that I will refuse to seek, support, or enact earmarks during the appropriations process for fiscal year 2009. However well-intentioned, earmarks are unconstitutional spending. We must also guard against halfway measures that allow funds to be appropriated, and then disbursed by unelected bureaucrats. Legislated earmarks are bad enough, and that’s even worse.
Perhaps Grover Cleveland said it best:
Grover Cleveland, the king of the veto, rejected hundreds of congressional spending bills during his two terms as President in the late 1800s, because, as he often wrote: “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.”
April 1st, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Glad to see you signed the FreedomWorks No Earmarks Pledge!
Brendan Steinhauser
http://www.theconservativerevolution.com
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:25 am
I just saw my first Lawson for Congress sign this morning, at the intersection of T.W. Alexander Drive and Miami Blvd in front of Sheetz. I live outside of your district (Wake County) but work in your district so I expect I’ll start seeing more of these on my motorcycle rides through Durham.
Sadly the Ron Paul signs have pretty much completely stopped. Sad, because I don’t think he’s technically withdrawn from the ballot and it would be good to see him get as much support as he can in the primary even though McCain has it in the bag. Indeed, that is an argument in favor of getting MORE people to vote for Ron Paul that otherwise wouldn’t have before: you’ve got nothing to lose!
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:05 pm
David Price has the 17th-highest level of pork barrel projects of all the House congressmen. 71 projects, $91 million.
http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_pigbook2008
I support your No Earmarks Pledge! Yeehah!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:41 am
“Nothing is free” should be replaced by “Every $1 from Washington costs you $2″
What district 14th needs to know is how much did the $750,000 check from the fed’s cost them. Perhaps citizens of district 14 had to send $1,500,000 in taxes to Washington to get $750,000.
(disclaimer: I do not know the actual “service” fee for Washington’s redistribution of funds)
April 4th, 2008 at 12:46 am
[...] (No more) Porker of the Month [...]
April 5th, 2008 at 11:13 am
The federal government is not involoved in charity. Every dollar someone gets from the federal government is forcibly taken from someone else. I for one do not want to be given this so-called “charity.”
April 6th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Question: If the money is not earmarked, does it not end up being spent by the Department of X, Y, and Z anyways?
Dr. Paul puts earmarks and votes against them, because he doesn’t want to spend but he also doesn’t want the money to be spent by random bureaucrats under the table. What is the process? How can we fix it?
April 8th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Brent — My understanding is that you are correct. We need to stop the appropriations to begin with, and stop the dealing that determines whose earmarks get funded. One way to fix the problem is to educate my constituents in advance that I’m not going to Washington with the goal of buying their votes with unconstitutional spending.
Realistically, in my efforts to displace a 22-year incumbent, I can’t promise lots of gravy from the train. If they want the gravy (with its undesirable consequences of inflation, a less valuable currency, and greater corporate control of government), they should vote for David Price. But our current economic situation is a convincing argument that we must change the status quo, and pursue a government that follows its own rules.