President Vetoes Pork
This morning, President Bush vetoed the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill that was enacted by the Democratic Congress. Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press reports here. The bill contains $10 billion in spending that was not in Bush's budget. That number is relatively small by federal government standards, but Bush's veto represents a welcome effort to rein in out-of-control federal spending.
The veto is especially appropriate because the bill includes a number of earmarks that were "airdropped" into the statute in conference and therefore have had no public scrutiny. Altogether, the bill included around 2,000 earmarks. Some examples:
* $1 million requested by Sens. Harry Reid (D-NV), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Tim Johnson (D-SD), and Tom Harkin (D-IA) for the Thomas Daschle Center for Public Service and Representative Democracy in Brookings, South Dakota.
* $1 million requested by Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Mark Pryor (D-AR) for the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock.
* $100,000 requested by Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) for O’Neill Sea Odyssey, an “educational” program conducted “on board a 65-foot catamaran sailing Monterey Bay.”
It appears that the there are not enough votes in the House to override the President's veto, so the most likely result is that the appropriation will be re-adopted but without some or all of the excessive spending to which the President objects. That's good news both for taxpayers and for transparency in government.
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