Republicans, as they often do, are playing a shell game with your money. They're currently making headlines for showing fiscal restraint in reversing their embarrassing $432 million boondoggle of the two bridges in Alaska that led to nowhere. But actually all they did was give it to the two Alaskan bloodsuckers, Don Young and Ted Stevens, in a different pork project. Do Republicans in Congress really think we're that stupid?
G.O.P. Strips Mandatory Funding for Two Alaskan Bridges
(
from Ketchikan looking south at a conceptional rendering of Gravina Island Bridge)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mandatory funding for two controversial bridge projects in Alaska -- including the ridiculed "bridge to nowhere" -- has been stripped from a federal spending bill, a congressional committee said on Wednesday.
In an unusual move to change "pork" spending, House-Senate negotiators removed the $432 million in required spending during final talks on a yearly bill to fund programs for the Transportation and Treasury departments, the House Appropriations Committee said.
As a compromise, Alaska will still receive the money that had been set aside for the bridges to spend as it likes on transportation needs.
Congressional negotiators were under pressure from lawmakers and fiscal watchdogs to address concerns about mandatory spending on pet projects. The bridges had become symbols of egregious spending during an era of record budget deficits.
The quarter-mile $223 million "bridge to nowhere" span got its nickname because it connects the port town of Ketchikan to neighboring Gravina Island, population 50. That and the other $209 million bridge - dubbed "Don Young Way" in Anchorage - could still be built but now must compete with other transportation funding priorities in the state.
Republican Rep. Don Young of Alaska, the House Transportation Committee chairman, shepherded both projects through Congress within the highway bill over the summer. Thousands of member pet projects were stuffed into the six-year road building measure. Projects included in the long-term blueprint are funded by annual appropriations bills.
After Hurricane Katrina, which devastated roads and bridges in Louisiana and Mississippi in August, some conservatives sought all lawmakers to voluntarily divert money from highway construction in their states to help rebuilding efforts.
(from Ketchikan looking south at a conceptional rendering of Gravina Island Bridge)
