Thursday, March 12, 2009

Smells Like a Pig - Las Vegas Review-Journal

Democrats push pork-laden spending through Congress Smells like a Pig

Perhaps President Obama is the leader of some political party other than that of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Hawthorne, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Barbary Coast.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and other opponents of the corrupt process of attaching earmarks to often unrelated spending bills, have been attacking the more than 8,000 pet projects stuffed into the president's $410 billion spending plan. But some big spenders are actually fighting back.

For example, allocating $1.8 million to study methods of controlling the smell of pig dung stinks to high heaven in these times of economic struggle, Sen. Coburn insists. "Pigs stink. We know why," said Sen. Coburn on the Senate floor last week. "So is that a priority right now?" But Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, defended the pet project that he himself had larded into the massive spending bill, without subjecting it to the normal hearing process: "In farm country, manure and odor management are profoundly serious challenges that can be mitigated through scientific research," Sen. Harkin squealed....

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