Thrilled to Death? She Should Be!
The mayor of Vienna, Virginia says she’s “thrilled to death” because U.S. Representative Tom Davis (R-Virginia’s 11th District) plundered American taxpayers for $100,000 to help pay for sidewalks in Vienna. The online Fairfax Sun-Gazette reported yesterday:
“Vienna’s burgeoning sidewalk-construction program got a boost on July 24 when the U.S. House of Representatives approved $100,000 for these projects.
“The moneys were among $1.2 million . . . for projects in (Davis’) district.”
She should be thrilled. Arlington taxpayers pay for sidewalks ourselves, as noted on this Arlington County webpage. Does that make Arlington County taxpayers a bunch of saps?
We’ve growled repeatedly about earmarks, the technical term for Congressional pork-barrel projects, which require little or no accountability. (including July 11, 2007, May 4, 2007, and June 10, 2006).
While on the subject of pork-barrel spending, we thank the National Taxpayers Union for their July 18, 2007 letter to U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) in which they endorse two Senate Resolutions, “which would strengthen earmark protections in the budget process,” and the Senator’s “steadfast efforts to make these a part of law.”
We also congratulate the folks at PorkBusters for their yeoman’s work fighting Congressional pork barrel spending. They’ve posted a list of 1,776 earmarks attached to the FY 2008 Defense Appropriations Bill. Arlington’s Congressional representative, Jim Moran is in 4th place on that list of 1,776 earmarks, sponsoring 40 of them.
If Congress can’t control its urge to use taxpayer money to buy votes through pork-barrel spending, there is little hope that it can ever begin limiting the growth of the rest of the federal budget. So write U.S. Senators John Warner and Jim Webb and Representative Jim Moran. Tell them the pork-barrel spending has to stop! And write or call South Carolina's Senator DeMint to thank him for his herculean efforts to reform pork-barrel spending. There are a few others, but Sen. DeMint is one of the leaders in the fight to reform earmarks.
UPDATE 7/30/07. The $100,000 earmark above for sidewalks in Vienna is not the only chunk of pork that Davis obtained for his district. There were a total of five earmarks totalling $1.2 million, according to this July 24 press release from Davis' office. All should be paid by local taxpayers rather than by all Americans.