From the Rapid City Journal:
In theory, everyone is opposed to “pork” in spending bills by Congress.
In practice, few people object when federal dollars are earmarked for specific projects in their congressional district.
That’s why, here in South Dakota, many people won’t complain about a $1 million earmark in an appropriations bill for the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services departments that would fund the Daschle Center for Public Service and Representative Democracy. The center, to be located at South Dakota State University in Brookings, would be an archive for former Sen. Tom Daschle’s political career.
Neither would many of us try to return a $100,000 appropriation for the Black Hills Symphony and the South Dakota Symphony contained in that same bill.
That money was aimed at an educational outreach program designed to expose South Dakotans to Native American music though educational events and cultural exchanges between symphony members and Native American musicians. (Think Black Hills Symphony concert master Carol Knowles jams with Native flautist Kevin Locke.)
But does SDSU need a Daschle Center for Public Service to honor the man who is, arguably, its most famous political science graduate? Maybe. If so, we think it should be financed through the university’s budget, not slapped onto a federal bill as a last-minute earmark.
Can’t symphony music lovers in South Dakota accomplish intercultural musical exchanges for less than $100,000 in public funds?
We think if symphony musicians around the state want to play, hear or expose schoolchildren to Native American music, taxpayers should not be expected to foot the bill for it.
Both of those questions are moot, at the moment, because President Bush vetoed the $606 billion appropriations bill for labor, education and HHS programs. It is, he says, larded with pork and at least $10 billion over budget.
With 14 months to go in his presidency, it seems President Bush has discovered his veto pen, using it to do battle with a Congress controlled by what he sees as tax-and-spend Democrats.
Given the huge budget deficits the Bush administration has created over the past seven years, we aren’t buying the premise that President Bush has suddenly become a fiscal conservative, either.
But we agree that appropriation bills shouldn’t have special, undebated earmarks inserted into them.
And every member of Congress should be concerned about wasteful spending, even in their home districts.
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