The senate health care bill is 3116 pages long, including 383 pages of “home-site provisions” added at the end. This is where most of the taxpayer gifts are included. The list is long and very,very expensive. The only Republican to gain “juice” from the health care bill is Senator Snowe of Maine (see Less Than Free Enterprise posted on December 7). It appears that even Senator Snowe will not vote for the final bill, however, in spite of being summoned to the White House twice recently so the President could remind her of the black liquor benefits he and the Democratic leadership secured for her.
These days, it pays to be a blue state. For example, there are billions of dollars of supplemental medicare funds flowing to democratically controlled states – not a penny to republican states. Michelle Malkin is a columnist who has listed, in Part 1 and Part 2, many of the special contributions flowing to states with Democratic senators.
It is true that pork barrel politics is not exclusive to the Democratic party or this administration. Still, congressional graft during the Clinton and Bush years now looks like chump change. The blatant abuse and the billions of dollars involved is unprecedented. This type of corruption is, by the way, what Senator McCain has made a hot button issue since he first entered office, and what he vowed to end if he had been elected President.
The Democrats are unapologetic. The following paragraph is excerpted from a Fox story, The Price is Right?
“People fight for their own states. That’s the nature of a democracy,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said on “Fox News Sunday…”This is just part of the normal legislative process,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
I don’t think so. But as long as media oversight is limited, and the public complicit, or at least listless, then pork-barrel spending will become more and more egregious.
