Rep. Betty McCollum
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), has a good question. Why is Congress giving money to the Pentagon to spend on NASCAR and other sports sponsorships when
veterans, along with other Americans, are unemployed, underserved, homeless?
The House recently "voted to eliminate funding for homeless veterans, slash community health centers serving low-income families and pass a fiscal year 2011 budget that would force 800,000 Americans to lose their jobs," McCollum said recently. "Yet taxpayer-funded sponsorship of NASCAR racing teams was protected. I find this absurd."
McCollum has failed twice to advance proposals that would have changed the way the military awards contracts and doles out funds for those events, as well as for ultimate-fighting sponsorships.
Undaunted, McCollum is mulling a new tactic.
Bill Harper, McCollum's chief of staff, said the lawmaker would likely offer an amendment on the House floor to the 2012 Pentagon appropriations bill that would limit the funds the military could spend on sporting events....
That amendment would have required the military to submit for a 30-day congressional review period any contract larger than $250,000 to sponsor a motor sports racing team, driver or event; a fishing team or tournament; a professional wrestling event, or an ultimate-fighting event.
The Army spent $7.4 million on a single NASCAR team sponsorship in 2010, according to Pentagon data provided by McCollum’s office. That same team deal cost the Pentagon $11.6 million the previous year.
The National Guard spent $20 million in 2010 for its sponsorship of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s No. 88 car and Jeff Gordon’s No. 24 car. The previous year, that contract was for $32.7 million.
The National Guard spent another $16.04 million to sponsor the FLW Outdoor College Fishing tour, which sees college fishing clubs compete for scholarships and prizes.
The military remains sacrosanct to the GOP, even when it's for spending millions on the glorified vanity project they call "recruitment." Because the outdoor college fishing tournament is so critical to national security. But it's not just a vanity project, it's a dubious one. Consider the $654,000 the Air Guard spent last year sponsoring one race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. That $654K "failed to deliver a single military enlistee."
That's money that could very well be spent elsewhere, particularly on veterans' programs, since they've been slashed along with every other type of assistance. Maybe the military would have better luck recruiting if a) we weren't involved in these endless wars, and b) they could see that life wasn't going to be so grim for them when they returned home after those endless wars.