When one thinks of expensive Federal public works projects, I'd imagine the Interstate Highway system comes to mind. Ha! It wasn't even close($25B over ten years) to the transportation bill just passed ($286.5B over five years).
Covering 1,752 pages, the highway bill is the most expensive public works legislation in U.S. history, complete with 6,376 earmarked projects, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. Kern County, Calif., home of powerful House Ways and Means Chairman Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R), snagged $722 million in projects, or nearly $1,000 per person. Los Angeles County, with clogged highways and 10 million people, will receive barely $60 per resident.
And then there's Don Young's Alaskan bridge.
The transportation bill, passed in the U.S. Senate last week, authorized over $220 million for a 200 foot-high (61-meter-high) road bridge to connect Ketchikan, a city of fewer than 8,000, to a ferry-served island that holds the local airport and is home to about 50 people.
Can I have a helipad in the cul-de-sac across the street so I can get downtown faster, please? Republican Party, fiscal conservatives. Not!
Posted by Linkmeister at August 4, 2005 03:45 PM | TrackBack