Oink! Posted by Michael Signer

It looks like President Bush, in his speech to the nation tonight on Hurricane Katrina, will propose funding the relief effort partly through the selective reduction in some embarrassing pork-barrel projects passed by "conservative' House members in their recent frenzy of self-indulgence called the highway bill -- you know, the one paved with bacon.

The Washington Post reports that the President is looking at a smart, tough proposal by the Heritage Foundation's Ron Utt (who's a family friend -- our families grew up on the same block together) to cut around $12 billion of pork and direct the funds instead to hurricane relief.  The idea borrows from a rare phenomenon -- people around the country who actually want to give appropriations back to the government.  Ron reports:

Indeed, the citizens of Bozeman, Montana, are proposing to return the $4 million they received for a new parking garage, arguing that the people of the Gulf need the money more than Bozeman needs a garage.  In Alaska, concerned citizens are barraging local newspapers with letters to the editor decrying the $320 million that will be wasted building the state’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.”

In the through-the-looking-glass ideological world of the Bush Administration, it's altogether weird that I should be praising him for borrowing a liberal (née conservative) approach on funding Hurricane Relief -- but whatever.  This is a good idea.

Of course, it wouldn't be any fun if I finished without noting the delicious fact that the opposition to the plan is coming from none other than Congressional Republicans:

While support for the giveback concept is spreading rapidly across the country, the response from Members of Congress has been mostly silence.  A few angrily defended the spending and challenged the practicality of the giveback plan, while others claim that the $2.5 trillion federal budget contains no low-priority programs or wasteful spending.  In response to questions from the press and pressure from voters, a spokesman for Highway Committee Chairman Don Young (R-AK) called the plan “moronic” and defended the highway legislation.

As a deficit hawk-conservative friend of mine said to me last week, referring to Virginia Republicans, who have similarly wreaked havoc with the Old Domion's budget:  "I'm too conservative to be Republican."

Exactly.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

In the through-the-looking-glass ideological world of the Bush Administration, it's altogether weird that I should be praising him for borrowing a liberal (née conservative) approach on funding Hurricane Relief -- but whatever. This is a good idea.

Liberal?? You're looking through the wrong glass. Paying for hurricaine relief by cancelling public works projects is not a liberal or progressive idea.

A progressive approach would be to pay for hurricaine relief and reconstruction by cancelling some of the Bush tax cuts. Under Bush, the wealthiest one percent of Americans have received, or will be receiving, tax cuts amounting to over a trillion dollars in lost federal revenues over the next decade. That's where the money should be coming from! The spending proposals you mention would employ construction workers and help stimulate local economies, benefitting many individuals who fall far below that top one percent.

We need more spending on our deficient and crumbling national infrastructure, not less. It is not surprising the the Heritage foundation is in favor of cutting spending on public works. As conservatives, they want to move spending from the national to the regional level. They oppose the redistribution of national income and believe infrastructure spending projects should be handled by local or state governments, if by government at all, or even better by the private sector. But by what magic might Bush propose paying for the Katrina project by further cuts in government spending, and succeed in getting progressives to think this is a good, liberal idea?

We can easily afford to tax more. Of the 30 OECD countries, the United States ranks 29th in overall tax burden as a percentage of GDP. Corporate taxes are now only 1.5% of GDP. And the $12 billion dollars in spending cuts mentioned doesn't come close to the $150 billion to $200 billion that are going to be needed.

Please stop paying attention to your old "family friends" who work at the Heritage Foundation, and your "deficit-hawk conservative friend", and start paying more attention to liberal progressives.

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