Something has been bothering me a LOT in the last couple of weeks and I want to address this here instead of Pragmatic Revolt because it effects the entirety of the Montana Blog-o-sphere. Maybe it is my non-partisan stance, but this issue crops up anytime there is a large appropriations bill going through Congress.
It can be argued that the primary function of Congress (or any legislative body) is handling money. This is done through budgeting and appropriations. It is a complicated process and involves a LOT of compromise, careful thought and often, heated debate. Even in a small, local City Council, the budgeting process can get ugly (I have posted enough about the Dillon Budget this year to give a clear picture of that), and at the federal level, this gets even uglier.
Further, when you start talking about a large appropriations bill on the federal level, the specter of “Pork” rears it’s ugly head. Before we go any further, let’s understand that not all “Pork” is created equal. Some things labeled ”Pork” are actually quite necessary infrastructure projects. Then you have things like “the Bridge to Nowhere” that partisan hacks like to dust off for a particulary nasty post.
The US Senate is currently debating the rather large Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008. This is a Huge Appropriations Bill involving literally Billons of dollars and hundreds, if not thousands of Amendments. This also presents the partisan hacks with all kinds of fodder for casting aspersions on any Senator they wish. Recently, Tester and Baucus have been targeted by the Right.
Budge led the charge by posting about Tester and Baucus voting against an amendment to increase funding for the Office of Labor Managements Standards. Unfortunately, like any Partisan Hack, that was NOT how he presented it. His post claimed that Tester and Baucus were “killing funds” for that office when in truth, the actual amendment was to INCREASE the funding for that office.
The next Charge was led by Mike over at The Last Best Place. He claimed that Tester was breaking his campaign promises by voting to table an amendment to ”require Congress to provide health care for all children in the U.S. before funding special interest pork projects.” I will give Mike credit in that he actually represented the amendment better than Budge did. Unfortunately, his analysis of the situation was just another partisan stab at Tester (and Baucus but that was underplayed).
The problem with both of these attacks is that they are ill conceived and are, quite likely, undeserved.
I have already pointed out many of the problem with Budge’s attack in another post and I won’t repeat that here. With Mike’s post, the problems are even larger.
First, the Amendment in question was tabled by 68 senators voting “yes” to table. This was a bipartisan move and it begs the question… “Why?”. The answer is pretty easy to find if you spend the time reading the amendment. This amendment is flawed in many ways and is, as far as I can tell, unenforcable and overly restrictive.
Second, as I pointed out above, not all “Pork” is unnecessary. Montana actually enjoys MORE than thier fair share of Federal Projects (in part because of the size of the State and it’s relatively small population). Our roads are better for it as are many other things.
Mike is correct that Tester did use “Pork” as one of the issues of his platform but let’s represent the situation correctly. Tester’s issue wasn’t that Federal Money shouldn’t be spent or even spent in Montana. Tester’s issue was with Congresscritters adding special projects to large appropriations bills without proper vetting - so called “11th hour” additions.
Now let’s be clear up front… I am an advocate for smaller government. I would like to see Government spending controlled and reduced and I would like to put an end to the idea that the Government has become a “jobs” program for more Governmental Employees. I am also strongly against further Federal Projects like the “Bridge to Nowhere”. That said, I believe that the only way that will happen is if there is some kind of fundemental change to the way special projects are added (and vetted) to these large appropriations bills.
Unfortunately for Mike, the reality of this situation has nothing really to do with “Pork” or ensuring more health care for Children. It has to do with the reality of actually looking at an action taken by the Senate without the partisan sunglasses on.
Sadly, we will never get a handle and the many issues with how business is done in Congress until we can step past this partisan BS (yes, it is just as prevalent on the Left as it is on the Right….). If our Congress Critters do something wrong, by all means, we should be calling them on it. I would only ask that we address these issues with at least a small measure of reality.
One thing I would like to see in dealing with these kind of issues (as well as curbing the worst of the partisan crap) is for our Congress Critters to figure out a way to post their reasoning behind voting one way or the other on a matter. There aren’t that many votes done in the Senate or the House to preclude our Senators and Representative from at least getting a staffer to stick up a short note explaining a vote on a website somewhere. It is the least they could do to inform us - their constituants - how they are representing us. At least then, we could have these discussions from the basis of informed fact rather than assumed bias.
Moorcat
