Pig (Congress)man, Ha Ha, Charade You Are...

Nick Gillespie | April 5, 2006

Citizens Against Government Waste has released its annual Congressional Pig Book, which details in all its lardy goodness the stomach-turning volume of pork-barrel spending in these United States. From the intro:

This year's list includes: $13,500,000 for the International Fund for Ireland, which helped finance the World Toilet Summit; $6,435,000 for wood utilization research; $1,000,000 for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative; and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C.

This year, there was good news and bad news. For fiscal 2006, appropriators stuffed 9,963 projects into the 11 appropriations bills, a 29 percent decrease over last year's total of 13,997. Despite the reduction in the number of earmarks, Congress porked out at record dollar levels with $29 billion in pork for 2006, or 6.2 percent more than last year's total of $27.3 billion. In fact, the total cost of pork has increased by 29 percent since fiscal 2003. Total pork identified by CAGW since 1991 adds up to $241 billion.

Go whole hog here.

Reason's Tim Cavanaugh drives off last year's biggest pork project, Alaska's bridge to nowhere, here.

Obscure headline allusion explained here.

Obscure tie-in to earlier post: Shouldn't the World Toilet Summit be held in Belgium, what with all the chocolate, beer, and Smurfs?

Comments

|4.5.06 @ 12:28PM|#

Fantastic headline...

|4.5.06 @ 12:52PM|#

Yes, very Floydian.

One would think that the GOP mastery of gerrymandering would have been enough to secure a majority for the long haul - but no! They had to bring home more pork than Ted Kennedy coming home from a luau - AND - break every election law and ethic in the book, all osetensibly to retain there power. Why? Paranoia, perhaps? Look at Nixon (and I hate to say it, but I'd take him over every president we've had since him and I'm a progresive liberal!). His reelection was in the bag, yet his paranoia got the best of him (well, really it was his loyalty - or was it?). The GOP proves the old adage (that I just made up) - the more they wrap themselves in the Bible and the Flag, the more they weather the both of them.

JMJ

Larry A|4.5.06 @ 1:12PM|#

Even though Alaska led the nation with $489 per capita ($325 million), it was less than half of Alaska?s 2005 per capita number of $985. The runners up in 2006 were Hawaii with $378 per capita ($482 million) and the District of Columbia with $182 per capita ($100 million)

Yeah. it was just the Republicans.

|4.5.06 @ 1:18PM|#

Here's a pretty fucking sickening comparison...

|4.5.06 @ 1:24PM|#

I now may rest in peace, knowing what awaits me in Sparta, N.C. Thank you, US government.

|4.5.06 @ 1:53PM|#

I used to pass through Sparta quite a bit. Three traffic lights, a Hardees and a courthouse sums it up quite nicely. And, oh yes, the high school. Proud home of the Sparta Trojans. I don't think that anyone there sees the irony.

Soon to have a world famous teapot museum.

|4.5.06 @ 1:56PM|#

I didn't find that headline at all obscure. Now open the priest hole, and eat your meat.

|4.5.06 @ 1:58PM|#

Money! It's a hit. Don't gimme none-o-that fiscal restraint bullshit.
I'm in the first class legislating set, and all my constituents need a new Corvette.

|4.5.06 @ 2:37PM|#

Obscure? This is one of the few headlines that I knew the source before reading the comments.

Guess that's what I get for hanging in the park back in the 80s, listening to Floyd and partaking in interstate commerce.

|4.5.06 @ 3:59PM|#

I like this from the "Praise for CAGW and the Pig Book" secton.


"Those peckerwoods don�t know what they�re doing. They don�t. They�re not being
realistic."

"The King of Pork" Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.)
National Public Radio, July 19, 2001


"All they are is a bunch of psychopaths."

CAGW "Oinker" Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)
Associated Press, December 26, 1999

|4.5.06 @ 9:07PM|#

Belgium is of course perfect for a toilet/urinal summit for this famous reason:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannequin_pis