Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Fiscal pigs

Among a number of pointed questions in a Washington Post column today, "Why Oh Why?," Terry Neal asked:

Would a president who proclaims himself to be a conservative sign a $286 billion highway bill packed with some 6,000 pork-barrel projects, many of them frivolous, while cutting a request from the Army Corps of Engineers to bolster hurricane protection in New Orleans from $105 million to $40 million? Wouldn't a president who calls himself a conservative, demand that taxpayer money be spent on priorities and try to do something to reform a budgeting system that rewards politicians for acting like pigs at a trough?

To which I might add that President Bush has stubbornly refused to accept any scientific fact that might lower the bottom line of his friends in the oil business. Despite a persistent campaign by local and state officials to obtain the $14 billion in federal appropriations for the Coast 2050 coastal restoration project, President Bush has been criminally negligent in denying those funds. In retrospect, doesn't it seem like a cheap price to pay?

2 Comments:

At 9/06/2005 09:47:00 AM, Blogger Michael said...

Indeed it seems like a small price to pay--pennies on the dollar (a line I used over at my blog).

As for science--I'm waiting for Shrub to come out with something like "science...is just a theory."

Yeah, and New Orleanians are just on vacation.

God, he just makes me furious.

 
At 9/06/2005 08:56:00 PM, Blogger Schroeder said...

Right, I never thought of it as vacation. Hell, maybe I ought to take in a few holes of golf like Bush did after he looked out the window of Air Force One on his way back to Washington from his vacation in Crawford.

 

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