Surplus Spending Spree: Congress Sets Record For Pork-Again!

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Surplus Spending Spree: Congress Sets Record For Pork-Again!

With an end of the year spending blitz, Congress blew away any remaining vestiges of fiscal discipline, breaking its own record for pork barrel spending set just a year ago. In the final hours of negotiations, the lard-bloated $650 billion discretionary fiscal year 2001 budget exceeded the President`s request of $623 billion and was $50 billion over the GOP`s own spending plan. Most Members of Congress had no idea what they were even voting on-the maneuvering and horse-trading was conducted behind closed doors-bypassing the review process.

Pork watch-dog Senator John McCain (R-AZ), released hundreds of pages listing pork barrel spending and earmarked funding for individual localities, and special interests. McCain was nonpartisan in his ample criticism for members of both parties as well as the President, stating that the egregious excess would cause a big chunk of the budget surplus to disappear.

Here are just a few of the `Bacon Bits` from the FY2001 budget:

$500,000 for the restoration of a carousel in Cleveland, Ohio.
$26 million for the rehabilitation of the opera house in the City of Meridian, Mississippi.
$1 million for the Animal Waste Management Consortium, Missouri.
$300,000 to a laboratory in East Lansing, Michigan to map and identify genes in chickens.
$600,000 to expand genetic research of catfish, Auburn University.
$300,000 for the Pineapple Growers Association in Hawaii.
$5 million for an insect rearing facility in Stoneville, Mississippi.
$5,800,000 to be transferred from the Coast Guard to the City of Homer, Alaska, for the construction of a municipal pier and other harbor improvements.
$2 million for the renovation on the Northwest corner of 63rd Street and Prospect Avenue in Kansas City.
$600,000 for two additional soybean geneticists at the Danforth Plant Science Center, Columbia, Missouri.
$143,200 for continuing termite research in Hawaii.
$500,000 for Peanut Allergy Reduction, Alabama.
$400,000 for the National Center for Peanut Competitiveness, Georgia.

Source: Senator John McCain (R-AZ), `McCain Names `Top Ten Porkbusters` in Agricultural Appropriations Bill, October 18, 2000. `Statement of Senator John McCain on VA-HUN Conference Report of FY`01,` October 20, 2000. Statement of Senator John McCain Remarks on H.R. 4475, FY 2001 Transportation Appropriations Conference Bill,` October 6, 2000. http://mccain.senate.gov/

This article first appeared in Volume 6, Issue 3 of "The Social Security and Medicare Advisor" newsletter (February/2001). To receive future editions of "The Advisor" in its special, free e-mail version, please click here.