Oink! Oink! What's that smell?
Could it be the transportation bill?
Amidst cries of, "I've got mine!," a big, fat porker of a transportation bill has passed the Congress.
Depending upon which newspaper you read, you got a very different view of what happened.
The Journal Sentinel, reporting from a parochial point of view, declared it a bonanza for Wisconsin. Happy days are here again. Some federal money might actually come to Wisconsin for a change, and as the hog farmers say, we are certainly tired of sucking hind teat here in the Badger state.
The New York Times painted a different picture of what went on, in its story.
It told of Rep. Don Young heading home for Alaska with about $1-billion in pork, noting:
About one-fourth of that money will be spent to build one of the biggest bridges in the United States, a mile-long, 200-foot-high span that will connect Ketchikan, a town with fewer than 8,000 people, to an island that has 50 residents and a small airport.Did I mention that Young, a Repub, chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House? Here's more:
Almost all members of Congress got some project or another in their district. In what he called the "pork pecking order," Mr. {Keith] Ashdown [of Taxpayers for Common Sense] calculated that in addition to the nearly $1 billion that went to Mr. Young's district, which is all of Alaska, the district of the senior Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, James L. Oberstar of Minnesota, can count on about $150 million. Other senior committee members got $60 million to $90 million, and junior members got about $40 million for their constituents.In Wisconsin, Rep. Tom Petri is a committee member and he, too brought home the pork, er, bacon, for his district. The JS reports:
U.S. Rep. Tom Petri, a Fond du Lac Republican, led the battle to improve the state's funding, from his post as vice chairman of the House Transportation Committee. An aide said he was not available for comment but released a written statement in which Petri said: "The increase in spending will mean 10,000 new jobs for our state. . . . It has been a struggle to craft this bill and to be fair to every region, but its importance would be hard to exaggerate."
In addition to the highway and transit formula money, the bill sends more than $480 million to Wisconsin for specific projects. By contrast, a single congressional district in Illinois - the northwest suburban Chicago area represented by Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert - captured some $200 million.
Two big highway projects together accounted for about one-quarter of the money directed specifically at Wisconsin.The bill earmarks $50.8 million for Milwaukee's Marquette Interchange construction, in addition to money flowing from the highway formula. State and federal officials have said that all federal funds together will likely contribute about $440 million of the $810 million price tag for rebuilding the crossroads of I-94, I-43 and I-794.
Projects to upgrade U.S. Highway 41 will take another $77 million beyond what the formula would provide, and the highway's name itself will be upgraded to Interstate 41 between the Milwaukee area and Green Bay. Much of Highway 41 lies in Petri's district, including the bridge over Lake Butte des Morts that alone will cost $28 million to rebuild.
Bet you're reading this thinking that's great, those Wisconsin projects are really needed. That's what the people in Alaska are saying about their bridges, too.
So who would vote against something stuffed with goodies for every state and district in the nation? Just about no one. In this case, four Senators and eight members of the House voted no.
"The problem is that there is no way to know what's worthy and what's not," said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a budget watchdog organization. "There's not a competitive review or any real process."
One of the "no" votes was cast by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the Badger Republican I try to bash at least three times a week on this blog, just to keep my edge.
His spokesman said that Sensenbrenner voted "no" because "it was laden with pork." This is one of those rare times when I agree with F. Jim.
You could smell the sausage being stuffed into its casings way out here on Lake Buttes des Morts. Maybe if Wisconsin pigged out on federal money more often it wouldn't be quite as tasty to our delegation and the media as it seems to be this time.
Their attitude seems to be: "What the hell, we've got ours, for a change. "
posted by xoff @ 8:03 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Well, how about ...
(ta-da!!)
A limited (Federal) Government!?!?
Some 200+years ago, a bunch of rabble-rousing-Revolutionaries wrote up a really good schema for one of those, in a now-very-distant land...
Well, strike a blow for integrity in budgeting. Until you think this is from a guy who applauds Governor Doyle and the way he treats Wisconsin's transportation budget, right Xoff?
Ladeling hundreds of millions out of the segregated transportation budget and bonding away the future of the roads program, all to send pork to the teachers union - that isn't real healthy budgeting - why I'd say there's even trichinosis in that there pork, Xoff.
And in Wisconsin, there's a process for identifying major road projects, and which ones most merit building, and when. You quote the Citizens Against Waste guy lamenting the fact that that sort of process is missing on the federal level: well, Wisconsin's got a great process, and it also has - or had, until the Governor came along - a segregated transportation fund, where gas taxes and registration and license fees went into paying for roads and transportation, and nothing else.
People have tolerated our gas taxes and other fees (even the unusual, to say the least, indexing of gas taxes) because they knew these things went to roads and other transportation improvements. But in raiding the fund and using it for other purposes, the Governor has utterly destroyed the integrity of that fund. In doing so he has, along with his deficit spending and his addiction to bonding, done more to destroy the transportation fund in the longer run than Kathy Falk or any other Public Intervenor ever could have dreamed.
Of course, he's been utterly impartial in his destruction of segregated and program funds: look at the energy conservation and efficiency Public Benefits program. He has cut that program off at the knees for two budgets running. These cuts have done incredible harm the program's standing in the legislature at a time when it has been struggling to get off the ground - legislative, utility, and advocate support has kept the thing alive more than the governor has in the face of his raids on the fund.
And please, do not get on the tired horse about Republicans cutting education, and the Governor saving our schools by increasing it, etc. That is Washington math, and Washington rhetoric, where an increase that is less than the increase you wanted constitutes a "cut."
No wonder they have problems with deficits out there.
And isn't that interesting: Jim Doyle's running deficits here, too.
Only a Republican can see the transferring of funds from one earmarked program to another as an increase in spending.
The programs have simply been prioritized differently. I don't know about you, but I'll take feeding, clothing, and educating our children over better roads any day. People seem to forget that that's OUR money, not the Governor's, the legislature's, and certainly not the road contractors.
Take care of our own first with my tax dollar!
Maybe you should transfer your kids to the Florence School District.
So what about all the Democrats in the delegation who were not shy about announcing the pork they brought home in the bill? Baldwin gets millions for more Parks in Madison? Are you kidding?
They all had their press releases going. Even the hawklet Russ.
"I'll take feeding, clothing, and educating our kids over better roads any day." And it's OUR money, "certainly not the road contractors." Like this is about road contractors. So a TRANSPORTATION fund is for schools. And an ENERGY EFFICIENCY fund (funded by utility ratepayers from rates set by the Public Service Commission in contested case dockets where, foolishly, parties argue about things like the value of electric service for the dollars they're to pay) is for schools. Because it is OUR money.
These are called SEGREGATED FUNDS for a reason. The monies that are paid into them typically come from users or at least from a revenue stream seperate from general taxes and are directed to accomplish a specified purpose. When you take money out of those funds and use them elsewhere you destroy the integrity of those funds, and if you keep on doing it, you destroy the support for those funds and the reason for their existence. The reasons or problems those funds are meant to address don't go away however. (You may or may not agree with these purposes but then get rid of the fund and the revenue stream/tax. Be accountable to the people paying it.)
Now you might not care about Wisconsin's roads (or transit systems railroads or state patrol or whether road congestion is alleviated and cars drive efficiently and therefor with fewer emissions) but the economy here pretty much relies on roads, so if you want tax revenues for you schools and your children, maybe you had better rethink your shortsighted willingness to rob Peter to pay Paul.
Not that the Governor is only robbing segregated funds. He's also robbing from the elderly. So might as well take clothes and food from them too - for the children, right?
Your whole argument is a tautology that evades the point. You are saying the Governor should take money meant for other things and direct it to "children" because....it is for children. My points are made above.
It's lousy that he's taking segregated funds, and he is driving this state further into debt in the meantime. Borrowing in the transportation fund is being increased, so yes, we are going further into debt. Structurally he is increasing deficit problems for future budgets. Health care for the elderly is requiring more and more state speniding - and he is robbing money from those accounts to keep up with his school spending.
He is spending more and more on schools and stripping the rest of the state's budget to do it.
I didn't hear you volunteer to enroll your kids in Florence County Schools.
It's a no-brainer - Hmmmm, Milwaukee Roads or Florence Schools? Segregated funds or General Revenue?
Who Cares? Take care of essentials first. Regular taxpaying citizens prioritize expenses every month, and you don't see them paving their driveways when they can't afford to feed the kids. What is it you don't get about this? It must be Madison logic. People like you are the problem with government these days, people who can't find their ass with both hands are running things (or not).
If Milwaukee wants new roads and stadiums, they have a much bigger tax base let them pay for it. Pull a FIB and put up toll booths, I'll be happy to pay my share when I'm driving through. But don't allow our schools to close when road construction can be put off a year or two, when hopefully we have a better economy, and better tax base. Then you can feed the road contractors all you want.
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