National Post
By Micheal Higgins
18 October 2013
President Barack Obama declared Thursday “how business is done in this town has to change.”
But in passing the Continuing Appropriations Act that got the U.S. government back to work and raised the debt ceiling, he showed it was business as usual.
In particular, it is worth looking at the seemingly innocuous Section 123 of the new legislation. This simply reads: “Section 3(a)(6) of Public Law 100-676 is amended by striking both occurrences of ‘$775,000,000′ and inserting in lieu thereof, ‘$2,918,000,000.’ “
The provision allocates US$2.9-billion — up from US$775-million — to rebuild two crumbling locks and a dam on the Ohio River in Kentucky.
Known as the Olmsted Locks & Dam, the project is already over-budget and behind time — it was targeted for completion by 2006.
Congress had previously declined to give it extra money.
Now, the provision has Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader and a Republican senator from Kentucky who negotiated an end to the shutdown/debt-ceiling crisis with Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, coming under fire, even from conservative groups.
"This is what’s wrong with Washington and it’s what’s wrong with Mitch McConnell"
“In exchange for funding Obamacare and raising the debt limit, Mitch McConnell secured a $2-billion Kentucky kickback,” said the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), a grassroots organization dedicated to electing “strong conservative leaders” to the U.S. Senate.
“This is an insult to Kentucky families who don’t want to pay for Obamacare and who don’t want to shoulder any more debt,” the group said.
“This is what’s wrong with Washington and it’s what’s wrong with Mitch McConnell.”
Stephen Ellis, vice-president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group opposed to government waste, said in an email it appeared Mr. McConnell “took advantage of his position to slip in this bit of parochial pork.”
Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, said the White House supported the project and it was Senate appropriators who requested it be included in the stopgap spending bill, not Mr. McConnell.
On Thursday, Mr. McConnell told Kentucky host Lee Cruse on WVLK radio, “There was no earmark.” He said the Army Corps of Engineers, who are doing the work, asked for the money as did the White House.
But the SNC, which opposes Mr. McConnell’s re-election in 2014, said, “Mitch McConnell is trying to blame others for this abuse, but everyone knows he negotiated this deal and everyone knows he wrote the bill. If he didn’t want the earmark included, he could have kept it out.”
Referring to the dam project, Republican Senator John McCain, told the Daily Beast website, “These people are like alcoholics. They can’t resist taking a drink. It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
“It shows that there are people in this body who are willing to use any occasion to get an outrageous pork-barrel project done at the cost of millions and millions of dollars. It’s disgusting.”
The bill’s other surprise was the allocation of US$174,000 for Bonnie Lautenberg, widow of senator Frank Lautenberg, who died in June, aged 89. Mr. Lautenberg, who was also head of the Automatic Data Processing payroll management company, was one of the Senate’s wealthiest men worth at least $57-million.
The $174,000 is a year’s salary. It is traditionally paid to the partner of a lawmaker who dies in office, so Ms. Lautenberg was not getting any special treatment.
"It’s hard to kick a widow or widower when they’ve just lost their loved one"
However, Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, a watchdog group, questioned whether it was time to reconsider such payments.
He says lawmakers’ spouses now receive payments from the Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance Program and a survivor’s annuity under the Federal Employees Retirement System.
“It’s hard to kick a widow or widower when they’ve just lost their loved one,” Mr. Sepp told the website Federaltimes.com.
“Still, it wouldn’t be inappropriate to examine whether it’s necessary in light of the other benefits that now exist.”
But did the payment and the “Kentucky kickback” need to be included in a bill that was primarily concerned with getting the U.S. government back in business? Or maybe that’s just the way business is done in the U.S. government.
original article found here
0 comments:
Post a Comment