government waste

Again, the IOKIYAR syndrome strikes:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has vowed to bring the Senate to a standstill unless congressional leaders agree to allocate $40,000 for a federal study on deepening the Port of Charleston.

Graham says one out of five jobs in South Carolina stem from trade through Charleston’s busy port, and he warns the entire state economy will suffer unless the port is overhauled.

The senator suffered a setback last week when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) did not include the funding in the 2011 budget deal.

Graham said he will not block the budget agreement to keep the government funded through the end of September but that he will hold up all other business until the matter is resolved. He said he would not delay the stopgap spending measure because it includes funding for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

When we fund research for things like cancer, monitoring volcanoes or tsunamis or anything other thing that can save millions of lives and billions in property, the right balks at “government waste”. Here we have a Republican Senator wanting to spend federal dollars to research something that will affect a community of less than 350,000 and the right is silent. While the dollar amount is far less, for some reason I am having flashbacks of the “bridge to nowhere” and the late Ted Stevens.

Today debate will heat up in the house over the spending bill for the rest of the fiscal year. One of the biggest issues is going to be over the F-35 fighter jet, specifically the engine. President Obama and Secretary Gates have called for putting a hold on spending for the engine. Even George Bush did the same thing in his last year in office. None of that matters to people like John Boehner though:

The engine battle pits Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates — who say the engine would waste almost $3 billion over the next few years — against GOP leaders like House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, whose state is a chief beneficiary. The spending measure includes $450 million for the engine, which would be built by the General Electric Co. and Rolls-Royce in Ohio, Indiana and other states.

This is an earmark, plain and simple, but to show how bad of an earmark it is, let’s have a look at the history of the F-35 development.

The new generation fighter jet has been in production since 2003, with the first test flight was in 2006. The original contract, which was awarded in 2001 for ten years, has been extended to 2016.

The fact that the stimulus isn’t seeing any Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate isn’t a sign that it’s a bad bill, it’s a sign that it’s something against a far-right ideology that has plagued this country for too long. A perfect example of this is from the mouth of one of the Republican Senators supporting the bill:

"When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today," said Specter, "one of my colleagues said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' My Republican colleague said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' I said, 'Are you going to vote with me?' And he said, 'No, I might have a primary.' And I said, 'Well, you know very well I'm going to have a primary.'{[}]amp;quot;

What’s this mean? Well basically it shows that the Republicans are scared to death. They saw what happened last November and now their own political lives are on support, with someone ready to yank the plug.

{[}]lt;p>If you look closely at the remaining Republicans in Congress, they are from solidly red areas. That means beating a Democratic is really no big problem. After all, these areas went for McCain in the year of Obama. But when you talk primaries you open a whole new can of worms. The last thing they want to see if some conservative saying “Mr. X” voted for that huge bill of “government waste”.  That gets the neo-cons salivating, and that leads to Republicans having to spend more money to defend their seats in a primary.

Sure - we can fork out all this money:

The U.S. government already has a courthouse at Guantanamo Bay, but the Pentagon isn't satisfied, CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports. It plans to spend $100 million of your tax dollars to build a huge new facility just down the hill.

"This is very expensive for the number of cases, 60, which they anticipate trying," says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

That's right, a $100 million courthouse to try about 60 cases. That's $1.6 million per defendant ... just for the building. The trials will cost many millions more.

So let me guess - Halliburton is tapped for the contract, so Dick Cheney become even richer at the expense of America. Why can't they just use a tent, with some armed soldiers to make sure the defendants don't run? This is just another sign of pure government waste and taxpayer fraud at the behest of George W. Bush and company. Congress must hold serious oversights as soon as the Democrats take control and put an end to this. Furthermore, the companies who have become rich from this crap need to repay the money to the taxpayers. I want mine back - don't you?