[Mb-civic] t r u t h o u t - New York Times | The Congress from Nowhere

[Linda Hassler]

I apologize if this has already been sent. After reading this, I wish 
we'd vote in an entirely new Congress! These self-serving people are 
getting lower and lower. We MUST expose them, and hurray for the 
NYTimes for doing so.

Linda Hassler

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111805F.shtml

The Congress from Nowhere
      The New York Times | Editorial

      Friday 18 November 2005

      Say this for the sad-sack Republicans in Congress: they really 
know how to get things done when it comes to meaningless face-saving 
legislation.

      The House's biggest accomplishment in recent days may be its 
decision to scratch those two notorious Alaskan bridges to nowhere - a 
$442 million chunk of highway pork that made a national laughing stock 
of the lawmakers - supposedly financial conservatives - who stuffed it 
into the budget.

      The retreat provides a definitive example of the legislative 
hypocrisy now gripping Congress. It won't actually save money because 
the funds will be shifted to Alaska's general transportation kitty for 
who-knows-what disposal. Actually taking unnecessary money away from 
the home state of a powerful Republican senator is a lift far beyond 
the lawmakers' capacity.

      As if to make the point, the Senate was simultaneously refusing to 
reform the nation's scandalous antiterrorism financing. Senators 
narrowly on guard for parochial self-interest killed the House's plan 
to fix the skewed formula. Talk about pork. The financing formula 
fairly oinks at the terrorist threat as it shortchanges high-risk 
cities and ports and rewards rural states with more anti-terror funds 
per capita than California, Texas and New York. The House proposal, 
co-sponsored by John Sweeney and Peter King, Republicans of New York, 
and Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, would cut back on patently 
unthreatened areas while still allowing each state a minimum of 0.25 
percent of the total funds for first responders and other antiterrorism 
operations.

      Senate parochialism carried the day in the secret horse-trading 
over assorted parts of the Patriot Act's renewal. As a result, the 
original law will prevail, with its 0.75 guaranteed minimum. In 
practice, this formula has proved to be not a ceiling; only a starting 
point for negotiating still more wasteful funds for sparsely populated 
states.

      Bush administration officials and the independent 9/11 commission 
have warned of the risks in maintaining the current formula. But lately 
Congress's idea of homeland security has been political posturing. The 
House has been wallowing through its great "budget hawk" melodrama - 
making a show of slashing Medicaid spending for the poor while quietly 
preparing still more tax cuts for the rich. Meanwhile, the Senate has 
passed resolutions on Iraq aimed at making it very clear that whatever 
happens, the members up for re-election should not be held responsible.

      No one expects any profiles in courage, or even difficult 
decisions, from this House and Senate. But putting local political pork 
above the protection of major terror targets is just pathetic. 
  
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