Well folks, the Citizens Against Government Waste have published the 2010 Pig Book. You can read the summary at www.cagw.org/reports/pig-book/2010. But, here are a few salient points in my areas of interest.
Department of Agriculture:
Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) has helped the Kansas Farm Bureau Foundation to acquire $250,000 for workforce development and apply for a $7,000,000 stimulus grant. It's parent organization, the Kansas Farm Bureau, had a fund balance of $98,000,000 at the end of 2007. Why spend their money when they can spend ours!
Thirteen Senators and Ten Congressmen have earmarked $4,841,000 for wood utilization research. Congress has earmarked $100,000,000 towards this since 1985. I'm sorry, I'm afraid I agree with CAGW. I believe that, after a quarter of a century of research and 219 years of US History, we would have discovered all of the uses for wood. Additionally, the US Forest Products Industry accounts for 6% of our GDP with $200,000,000,000 a year in sales and $54,000,000,000 in salaries could afford to do this with their own money. What the taxpayer has spent in 25 years is 5% of what the industry has grossed in 1 year. The $4,841,000 of tax dollars for 2010 is only 1/4 of 1% of their annual sales. Why are they spending ours?
Five Senators and Four Congressmen have earmarked $2,573,000 for potato research. McDonald's buys 3.4 billion pounds of spuds a year. Let them fund the research!
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Congressman Ciro Rodriguez (D-TX) have earmarked $693,000 for beef improvement research. In 2008 we, Americans, ate 59.9 pounds of beef, per person and spent an average of $249 per person to buy for the year? The beef industry grossed $76,000,000,000 from consumer spending in 2008. Again, let them fund the research.
Departments of Commerce and Justice:
Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) earmarked $61,600,000 for 30 projects.
Senator Thad Cochran (F-MS) earmarked $44,400,000 for 27 projects. This included $11,200,000 to two state funded universities, 1/2 million dollars of which was earmarked for cannabis eradication at USM. Give me a break. If you want to remove pot from the college campus the only way you can do it is to burn the campus and kill all the students. Otherwise it's a lost cause.
Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) earmarked $32,500,000 for 17 projects. $10,125,000 went to three state funded universities and $6,000,000 for the NOAA budget. If NOAA needed it, they should have asked for it during the budget process. Oh, excuse me. Nancy Pelosi and Stenny Hoyer decided we didn't need a budget for 2010, just appropriations.
Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) earmarked $28,500,000 for 21 projects, including another $3,000,000 for NOAA.
Department of Defense:
DOD is a fun place for earmarks. Over 50% of the cost of earmarks placed in DOD appropriations are placed by anonymous Senators and Congressmen. This in itself violates Congressional Rules.
35 anonymous elected officials placed $6,056,565,000 in earmarks for 35 projects. This included $1,875,000 for "genetic studies of food allergies".
Another $2,500,000,000 was earmarked, anonymously, for the purchase of 10 new C-17 Aircraft. I could go along with this except for fact the Air Force neither needs nor wants them. They already have on hand, or on order, 205 C-17s!
$465,000,000 was earmarked, anonymously, for development and procurement of an alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. Again, I thought that would be OK, until I read where the Secretary of Defense recommended that the President veto any legislation that included funding for this engine or for the 10 new C-17s!
Senator Dan Inouye earmarked $198,150,000 for 37 projects. These include $23,000,000 for the Hawaii Federal Health Care Network - which has received $180,650,000 in earmarks since 2001; $10,000,000 for a Hawaii technology development venture (?); and $8,000,000 for the Center of Excellence for Research in Ocean Sciences (CEROS)- which has received $47,600,000 since 1996. According to CEROS, since 1993 they have spent $100,000,000 for projects that created 135 jobs in Hawaii. That's $740,000 per job! Didn't another Hawaiian politician do that nationally? I think his name is Obama.
The late Congressman John Murtha (D-PA) set up the non-profit Concurrent technologies Corporation in his district in the 1980s and guided over $1,000,000,000 in earmarks to them. The group is being investigated by the FBI.
Without rewriting the entire summary, I'll let you go read it. By my math I saw $11,573,084 in pork in the appropriations. CAGW figures were closer to $19 billion.
One of the things that just amazes me is how stupid we are. The Constitution, Article I, Section 7 says that all bills for RAISING revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives. However, it doesn't discuss who can spend it. Senator Mikulski of MD had $28.5 million in earmarks. If that money was stacked up next to her, in $1000 bills, would be 10.2 feet tall - the good Senator is less than half that height!
God Bless the 112th Congress.
Gunner Sends
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