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California Picks Uncle Sam’s Pocket & #711;Again

California Picks Uncle Sam’s Pocket ,Again

OPINION

by Ronald Fraser

While U.S. special forces hone their skills with an eye on far away Iraq, Sen. John McCain of Arizona says pork commandos in Washington are “draining away funds desperately needed for enhancing our war fighting capabilities.”

Using well-timed hit-and-run tactics, pork warriors recently stuffed the 2003 military construction spending bill with scores of projects neither the Department of Defense nor the president asked for , including some in California.

According to McCain, pork projects add up to more than $900 million, or 14 percent of this year’s $6.3 billion military construction bill. A Citizens Against Government Waste tally puts the total more than $1.5 billion.

If the generals and admirals running the war on terrorism did not consider these projects urgent enough for inclusion in their budget, why, taxpayers might ask, would members of Congress order the Pentagon to spend hundreds of millions of their hard-earned tax dollars on them?

Rather than protect the homeland, these congressional boondoggles are designed to safeguard the votes members of Congress need for re-election. They are lasting reminders to the folks back home just how hard their elected officials in Washington have been working to bring in federal money and jobs , all in the name of national security.

This year’s military construction raid netted California $410,000 for a gatehouse at the North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado, and a child development center at Camp Pendleton costing $8.2 million.

Protesting the practice of hiding pork projects in military spending bills, McCain said, “There were 26 conferees (including Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Sam Farr of California’s 17th District) on the military construction conference committee who represent 19 states. Of those 19 states only one, Wisconsin, did not have projects added onto this appropriations bill. Some 60 projects are in states represented by the conferees, totaling more than $530 million.”

Pork warriors depend on stealth, intimate knowledge of the budget-making terrain and split-second timing to pick Uncle Sam’s pocket behind closed doors.

Pork projects are rarely brought through the front door and judged on their merits on the floors of Congress. Capitol Hill pork commandos prefer an ambush.

The initial cost of pork-funded military facilities is but a down payment. Once built, these facilities will continue to claim millions of additional tax dollars for maintenance and operating costs for years to come.

Ignoring the common-sense idea that this money should be left where it was , in the taxpayers’ pockets , some claim the lucky towns receiving pork projects benefit from high-paying construction jobs. In the long run, however, American taxpayers in other states will lose far more than the California construction workers will gain.

Worse still, California’s raid on the military construction bill is just a small part of a larger raiding party. Citizens Against Government Waste estimates Congress handed out more that $20 billion in pork in 2002.

Sure, California got $672 million of that amount, but California citizens also chipped in to pay the $19.3 billion going to other states.

The only winners in this pork-for-votes scheme are members of Congress. Army, Navy and Air Force officials get stuck with costly projects they don’t want, the president loses control over his own budget, and the budget deficit and the public debt goes up.

Fraser writes on public policy for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington, D.C.-based civil liberties organization.

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