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Jeb in the News
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Hensarling derides pervasive "pork"
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By Kelly Young
As Published in the Jacksonville Daily Progress August 17, 2006
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How much of one’s federal tax money would the average citizen of Cherokee County be willing to spend to build an indoor rainforest in Iowa? Or the Paper Industry Hall of Fame? Or the Sparta Teapot Museum of North Carolina? Probably not much, yet Cherokee County tax money has been used in the past few years to fund these and many other pork-barrel projects across the country.
Current congressional earmarking procedures allow politicians to fund their pet projects using federal tax money, but U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling is on a mission to curtail the legislature’s pork-barreling ways. Hensarling, R-Dallas, was in Rusk Wednesday morning to share his views on fiscal responsibility with his constituents.
“I believe this is a significant problem. Last year the American people spent $29 billion of their hard-earned dollars on earmarks — that’s more money than we spent as an entire nation on veteran’s health care,” Hensarling said. “Earmarks may only be a small portion of the annual budget, but they are a large portion of the culture of spending in Washington, and $29 billion is still a lot of money.”
According to Hensarling, “pork” has increased as a percentage of spending bills almost 10-fold in the last decade.
“I’m not here to tell you that all earmarks are bad, but it is a process that is more abused than it is respected. More often than not, they represent a triumph of congressional seniority over merit, of secrecy over transparency and of special interest over national interest,” he said.
Hensarling listed numerous examples of pet projects around the country that have been federally funded in the last few years:
• $25,000 for the Clark County school district in Nevada to help develop the study of Mariachi music;
• $70,000 for the Paper Industry Hall of Fame;
• $100,000 for the Richard Steele Boxing Club of Henderson, Nevada;
• $175,000 for the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas;
• $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum;
• $13.5 million for the International Fund of Ireland, including the World Toilet Summit;
• $50 million for the Coralville Rainforest.
Famous among pork-barrel projects for its exorbitance is Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere,” which would cost approximately $250 million in order to connect the 50 residents of Gravina Island to the mainland of Alaska. Hensarling said that despite the negative publicity the bridge has received in the national media, the project still has a chance of completion. Comparing the legislation to a monster from a horror movie,Hensarling said “every time you think you’ve killed it, it comes back to life; it’s not down for the count yet.”
According to Hensarling, an unspoken rule exists in congress that if you vote for my earmarks then I will vote for yours — no matter how ridiculous they become.
Hensarling is working with other fiscal conservatives to create a lean-pork pledge that politicians would sign demonstrating their intent to cut down on earmarks. He also helped introduce the Family Budget Protection Act which would increase earmark transparency, would include sun-setting provisions for federal programs and would institute a constitutional line-item veto.
“We have to go further in changing the culture of spending in Washington. Higher government spending leads to higher taxes and I, for one, believe that better things can be done when taxpayers keep their own money,” Hensarling said. “I fear that if we say ‘yes’ to earmarks today, we are saying ‘no’ to our children’s future tomorrow.”
Early in his tenure as a federal representative, Hensarling admits he made a few earmark requests, but he insists that he has ceased the practice in order to lead by example.
“Earmarks are the gateway drug for spending addiction and are big contributors to the culture of runaway spending in Washington. At the end of the day, in order to pay for earmarks, Congress forces families to fork over more of their hard-earned tax dollars to benefit a select number of people, and that will keep families from achieving their American Dream,” he said. “In 2006, Congress spent $29 billion in earmarks. That is enough to fund the monthly Social Security benefits of 34.5 million Texans or the annual benefits of almost 2.9 million Texas seniors. As long as we are running a deficit, each dollar Washington spends comes out of the Social Security Trust Fund. We must ask ourselves if earmarks are worth threatening the retirement security of our nation’s seniors who have paid into Social Security for decades. I say they are not.” |
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