Pop quiz: who was in charge of government during this
pork explosion?
Number of Pork Projects in Federal Spending Bills
2005 - 13,997
2004 - 10,656
2003 - 9,362
2002 - 8,341
2001 - 6,333
2000 - 4,326
1999 - 2,838
1998 - 2100
1997 - 1,596
1996 - 958
1995 - 1439
And lest anyone think that the Club for Growth and me are getting too cozy, what the hell is up with this from their blog?
As if yesterday wasn't depressing enough. On the subject of budget reconciliation, Larry Kudlow writes on his blog:
I can tell you right now, after having coffee with a dozen or so Republican Senators on Tuesday morning, that not only are these pork-barrel spending cuts up in the air, so are the tax cut extensions.
The Senate GOP is very much in danger of forgetting the principles that got them control of the Senate in the first place.
For an organization that claims it's for fiscal sanity to oppose the sunsetting of Bush's irresponsible tax cuts is the height of hypocrisy.
In 2004, we had $895 billion in discretionary spending, including $454 billion in defense spending. That means that we had $441 billion in non-defense discretionary spending.
Our budget deficit in 2004 was $412 billion. So without raising revenues, our nation would literally have to eliminate the entire defense department (which ain't gonna happen) or its entire non-defense discretionary spending to simply balance the budget. That's not including the $4.3 TRILLION in debt we current hold and should really be trying to pay off.
I'm a strong proponent of a fiscally responsible country, and the Senate votes on the Coburn Amendment yesterday told me that Democrats still have a ways to go before they can truly be considered the party of fiscal responsibility (may the gods bless Feingold, Bayh, and Conrad for being the only Democrats with the cojones to vote against egregious pork).
But fiscal responsibility means more than cutting pork. The numbers are unambigious -- we need to raise revenues to close the gap between government spending and revenues. That the Club for Growth ignores this problem in favor of advocating more tax cuts is grossly hypocritical.
On the other hand, that Republican senators are considering ditching the tax cut extensions is clearly a good sign that we might restory some sembleance of sanity to our nation's finances.
Comments are closed on this story.