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?