The spendthrifts in Congress are sending PCs to Armenia, flying Russian politicos to Colorado's Coors Brewery, and paying for "pony trekking centers" in Ireland.
Advanced "asparagus technology" in Washington state gets $260,000, while a fat $3 million goes to promote "private sector technology start-ups" in Georgia -- not the state, but the ex-Soviet republic.
It's time for the annual roundup of profligate pork spending, published each spring by Citizens Against Government Waste, a taxpayer watchdog group in Washington, D.C.
Technology programs of dubious necessity have larded up the most recent round of federal spending, the group says, with politicians vying to route dollars to their home states by pitching them as ways to launch Internet firms or to bridge the so-called digital divide.
"The problem is that you put 'technology' on something and people are mesmerized by it," says CAGW vice president David Williams. "That's one of the things they do with pork: Give it a really cool name, so how can you be against it?"
The fattest porkers in Congress are, as you might expect, the top Democrats and Republicans on the appropriations committees. Senators Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) are particularly skilled at -- and notorious for -- bringing home about ten times as much bacon as the Senate average.
Last year, Byrd labeled CAGW a "bunch of peckerwoods" during an NPR interview. CAGW gleefully replied in a press release: "For Byrd the term peckerwood probably rolls off the tongue much easier than any combination of 'against,' 'government,' and 'waste.'"
CAGW's "Pig Book" tries to carve out and identify unnecessary federal spending from the 13 appropriations bills that Congress enacted last year. What's unnecessary is defined as spending that's requested by only one chamber of Congress, not requested by the president, not the subject of congressional hearings, or "serves only a local or special interest."
For the 2002 fiscal year, 8,341 projects won the moniker of pork, totaling $20.1 billion, up 9 percent from last year.
Among the projects for this fiscal year that CAGW identified as pork:
- $68,085,000 for projects in Byrd's home state for the Veterans' Affairs appropriations. Of that, $16,775,000 goes to the Institute for Software Research, including $14,350,000 for developing and constructing research facilities.
- Another $17,360,000 for Byrd's state from the Education Department's appropriations. That includes $2,000,000 for West Virginia University to create a center on obesity, $1,000,000 for technology at the University of Charleston, and $200,000 for a computer science program at Glenville State College.
- $9,440,000 for projects in the state of appropriations subcommittee member Harry Reid (D-Nevada). That includes $669,000 to buy every student at Schurz Elementary School and Hawthorne Elementary and Junior High School a laptop computer.
- $273,000 spent in the state of Senate appropriator Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-Missouri) at the Blue Springs Youth Outreach Unit for educational training in "combating Goth culture."
- $8,000,000 to provide computer equipment and Internet access to schools in Armenia ($5 million) and to promote tech startups in the Republic of Georgia ($3 million).
- $2,700,000 for projects in the district of House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young (R-Florida). That includes $200,000 for the Don Vista Community Center in St. Petersburg, which the city barely saved from becoming a nudist colony.
- $4,425,000 for projects in the state of Senate appropriator Larry Craig (R-Idaho), including $300,000 to develop a "virtual business incubator" at Lewis and Clark College.
Stevens, the top Republican member of the relevant Senate panel, has called CAGW "a bunch of psychopaths that go around and raise money from the extreme right. They are idiots."
CAGW says that it raises 80 percent of its budget from individuals, and claims 1 million members and supporters. Of those, 600,000 have given the group a donation, with the average being 25 dollars.
