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September 26, 2005
Pork
Instapundit and NZ Bear are leading the charge against federal pork with their new Porkbusters campaign. Instapundit has many good posts on this subject that he and his readers are coming up with. See this post which shows how clueless many senators and congressmen are when it comes to this issue. Here are several form letters constituents received from their congressional representatives that do not even address the concern about pork that the original letters from constiuents were about.
As much as I desperately hope that this campaign works, I am very pessimistic about it. Neither party wants to limit government spending. And as much as most people will say that they want to limit government spending, when it comes down to it many of these same people are too fickle to let any cuts occur when the cuts start effecting the pet programs they like. So nothing gets limited and the federal budget deficit continues to rise even as federal and state tax revenues increase. The sad thing is that our federal government could be running a surplus in the tens of billions of dollars fairly easily, but no majority in congress or in the public wants it bad enough so that they are willing to sacrifice their own pet projects. Projects that, in the end, most people would not miss if they were gone.
Posted by Pete at September 26, 2005 02:38 PM
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