Pork And Water

In the first Congressional override of a Bush veto, the water bill was passed today. The problem is that this bill was chock full of pork. Sadly, a large majority of Senators chose pork over fiscal responsibility. The few dissenters:

12 Republicans voting against:

Allard
Burr
Brownback
Coburn
DeMint
Ensign
Enzi
Gregg
Kyl
Sessions
McConnell
Sununu

2 Dems against the override:

Feingold
McCaskill

While it's great that all of these people stood for fiscal responsibility, it's a disturbing sign that there are so few.

There's my two cents.



***UPDATE***
I wanted to revisit this one to illustrate just how bad this overspending problem is. These are some key facts to understand:

1. the Army Corps of Engineers estimated about $5 billion needed to be spent
2. the Senate made a bill worth $14 billion to cover the ACE's recommendation
3. the House countered with a bill worth $15 billion
4. in conference committee, the Senate/House negotiators compromised on a bill worth $23 billion
5. 19 earmarks were added in the conference committee

Do you see how this Congress works? They somehow turned $5 billion in repairs and projects into $23 billion of overspending! And, those 19 earmarks that were added to the bill were not debated or amended by the Congress. There was no chance to stop them, no matter how awful they were.

I thought this was precisely the sort of shenanigans that the ethics 'reform' bill was supposed to stop...!

Congress needs to get itself under control.