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Originally Posted by E-brake I expect both, I want to keep my tax cuts and I think the government should step up to the plate on health care and insurance. The government takes in mroe than enough money to cover it they just need to re-budget and cut a lot of the pork programs.
$19,569,000 thanks to Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) to study the effects of cattle crossing streams in rural areas.
$14,534,000 thanks to Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) in government funds to clean up the streams from "cattle polution" and grazing land runnoff
$9,929,000 thanks to Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) for or agriculture-based industrial lubricants, and hoop barns
$7,227,000 added by Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) for poultry litter composting
and an additional $36,924,000 from other crazy government programs such as the national wild turkey reserve, and wool research
Right there out of the Agriculture budget I have found a way to save;
$88,183,000.00...
...Also the millions spent in government for "flood controll" in Las Vegas, And biggest of all the 100+ million that we pay farmers for growing corn to make Ethenol (they use more fossil fuels to make the ethenol than it produces)
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Ahh yes, but what better way to maintain the support of your constituents by bringing home the bacon every once in a while!
Sadly, shit like that is what's considered tangible to people in home states. Rarely do they catch wind of how you voted on one bill or another - even if they did, results - or, word of results - means votes. Silly, isn't it? Ideally, monetary planning at all levels of bureaucracy would adhere to the "Zero-budgeting" philosophy - re-justifying the need for every dollar for the upcoming year, rather than pegging it to the year before (i.e. "This is what we set aside last year, so let's just go from there" ).
Of course, that pork-barrelling doesn't always go unchecked. Remember, there are plenty of intermediate budget and appropriations committees that can nip that shit in the bud. When it comes to agriculture, though, they usually don't. The farmers have had their hands in the till for so long, (the "we feed you" argument has been rather compelling) ... that it's to the point where agricultural subsidies are just a fact of life, and they're pretty much guaranteed that they'll have SOMETHING to do, even if it's just harvest ethanol... heh.. I think a misallocation of resources is more grossly realized in the upholding of protectionist measures and trade barriers, and I hypothesize that more capital (jobs, production, etc) is lost in that scenario than in pork barrelling (easily into the multi-billion dollar arena).
Brad