Pork Addicted Congress

Fire of Liberty

This afternoon I came across a story in which Democrats were blaming the war in Iraq(Or Gov. Pawlenty vetoing a 7.5 cents tax on already pricey gasoline) for soaking up funds from bridge repairs in the US(And in general Minnesota) and this evening I came across a story over at WABC 77 that had Congressman Don Young(R-AK) saying we've got to impose major taxes on this nation to rebuild our infrastructure.(I don't find Young's statement that shocking due to his love of Highway pork which is why Alaska gets the biggest outlays from the feds on highways.) I myself don't understand why the Democrats and some Republicans are so quick to jump on the bandwagon on raising our taxes when all they have to do is focus on spending our tax dollars on useful things like highways, national security, printing money rather than throwing it towards useless pork that Congress loves so dearly. Someone who sees through the non-sense in Rush Limbaugh who made the observation that Minnesota has over a $2.1 billion surplus and it receives a bevy of pork from the feds. Here's a look at Minnesota's piece of pork:

This is just a list of pork in Minnesota. A new $776 million Twins stadium to be paid for with a Hennepin County sales tax increase approved by state legislators with no voter referendum, $97.5 million for the North Star commuter rail line, $34 million in subsidies to ethanol producers that have seen a 300% increase in profits in the last year, and yet they're still being subsidized, $30 million for bear exhibits at the Minnesota and Como zoos, $12 million to renovate the Schubert Theater in downtown Minneapolis, one million for a replica Vikings ship in Morehead. Other states are building drag racing museums. They run around and say they don't have enough money to fix the bridges. They don't have enough money to deal with the infrastructure. The thing is with liberals they'll never have enough money, no matter how much they raise, no matter how much they increase taxes.

For me, I'd say that before members of the Democrat controlled Congress should look at their own house and straighten up the books and lean the budget down to what we need and push aside the crazy pork projects that don't help this nation. Let's hope that the American people wise up to Congress and their attempts to raise our taxes.