Examples of the Government's Spending Problem

This page will be updated every two weeks with different example of outrageous government spending, from both our nation's Capitol and our state Capitol in Jefferson City, MO. Feel free to send examples of frivolous spending you find, to info@billylongforcongress.com.

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Tracking Your Taxes: Park Pork?

Posted By William La Jeunesse On February 9, 2010 @ 12:05 PM

If you are hoping to visit the newest crown jewel in America's park system chosen by Congress, throw away the car keys and open up your wallet. The 2,900 pristine acres of beachfront property were not cheap -- or even in the United States.

The property soliciting accusations of "pork" from critics is the Castle Nugent National Historic Park. It's in the U.S. Virgin Islands, about a thousand miles from Miami and an expensive jet ride to get there.

Two weeks ago, on a near party line vote, a huge Democratic majority in the House agreed to spend $50 million to buy the former cotton plantation on the island of St. Croix.

"This is a beautiful and important natural and cultural resource that is in danger of being lost forever," Virgin Island delegate, Donna Christiansen, told House colleagues in January.

"The site to be designated as the Castle Nugent National Historic Park continues to be heralded as one of the last pristine areas in the region."

The mixture of dry forest and rangeland offers picturesque views of the Caribbean Sea, but good luck getting there. Critics in Congress say the purchase is wasteful and irresponsible, especially with unemployment at 10 percent and the nation in debt.

"Now is not the time to spend up to $50 million dollars of the taxpayers’ money to buy nearly 3,000 acres of beachfront property on a Caribbean Island," said Rep. Doc Hastings, (R-Wash.), ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee. "We can't afford a price tag for a new park in St Croix, just as many Americans will never be able to afford a visit there."

Democrats approved the purchase, even though the National Park Service has yet to complete a study on the purchase.

"We don't have the money to do this," said Rep Jason Chaffetz, (R - Utah). "Currently the National Park Service has an estimated $9 billion in backlog maintenance on existing parks.

Why should the people of Iowa, Rhode Island or California or Utah have to continue to pay and supplement the people there on St Croix for this property?"

But a majority on St. Croix, where the economy depends on tourism, support the purchase.

"It allows us to maintain the natural beauty of St. Croix and also at the same time it allows for the historic nature of the property," Virgin Islands Governor, John de Jongh Jr., told Fox News.

The land is currently used as a cattle ranch. It includes an estate house and two row houses where the owners kept slaves that worked on the plantation. Most of the land is owned by the Gasperi family, who bought the land in the 1950's and approached the U.S. Government about four years ago about buying it.

"It's beautiful, it's lush, it's green," Mauro Gasperi said. "It contains a beautiful reef in front that we want to maintain as clean and as pristine as when we first bought it."

The Gasperi family maintains it wants to sell the land to the U.S. government in order to protect it from developers. Critics in Congress say there is nothing stopping them from doing that. They don't have to sell, or the family could impose a conservation easement on the land, preventing development forever.

"Sometimes you have to say, enough is enough," Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah told the House in January. "We heard it is (the Gasperi's) desire that this land not be developed, but preserved in its current condition. It seems to me they are in the perfect position to accomplish that goal as landowners."

The Senate is now expected to take up a similar bill.

Pork Watch Continues

Citizens Against Government Waste continues to catalogue the excesses of government and the politicians who participate.

$2,192,000 by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee member Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), then-House appropriator JamesWalsh (R-N.Y.), and Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y.) for the Center for Grape Genetics in Geneva. New York’s wine and grape industries generate $6 billion annually in sales. Taxpayers should not have been soaked for this money.

$35,260,250 for 24 projects by Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee member Mary Landrieu (D-La.), including: $1,903,000 with scandal-plagued then-Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) for a clean power energy research consortium; $735,000 for Livingston Parish; $478,000 for the Port of Iberia; $400,000 for East Baton Rouge Parish; $287,000 for Spring Bayou; $254,000 for the city of Gretna; $229,000 for Cross Lake; $119,000 for ecosystem restoration of the Amite River and its tributaries; $191,000 for Bossier Parish; and $155,000 for the Calcasieu River and pass navigation.

Pork through Earmarks

Citizens Against Government Waste found 10,160 projects costing taxpayers $19.6 billion in pork in the 2009 budget. The 2010 budget is similarly full of pork. This represents .6% of overall budget, which works out to between 2% and 3% of discretionary spending. Nonetheless, it is nearly the size of the entire $23.1 billion budget of the State of Missouri!

$4,841,000 for wood utilization research in 10 states, requested by 13 Senators
$2,000,000 for the Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaii for the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii
$254,000 for the Montana Sheep Institute. Since 2002, CAGW has uncovered seven earmarks worth $3,033,950 for the Montana Sheep Institute.
$1,900,000 for the Pleasure Beach water taxi service in Connecticut
$381,000 for the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra’s residency program
$300,000 for shrimp aquaculture at the University of Southern Mississippi
$1,037,000 for potato research
$1,200,000 for rat eradication at the Palmyra Atoll Natural Wildlife Refuge
$400,000 for music education programs at Jazz at Lincoln Center, despite the fact that Jazz at Lincoln Center already has $198 million of their own money in a fund
$200,000 to the Providence Holy Cross Foundation for a tattoo removal violence prevention program
$1,791,000 for swine odor and manure management research

Pork in the Stimulus

$800,000 to build a back-up runaway for the Congressman John Murtha Airport in Pennsylvania (aka the “Airport for Nobody”). ABC News reported that the airport, which has about 20 passengers per day, was receiving $18 million to construct a runway of reinforced concrete that’s big enough to land any airplane in North America. The airport also has a $7 million air traffic control tower and a $14 million hanger. Since 1990, this airport has received a total of $150 million in federal money. It has only one airline that flies to only one city—Washington D.C!
$550,000 on a skateboard park in Pawtucket, Rhode Island
$2 million to monitor scallop reproduction and habitat in Nantucket
$80 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, some of which is being spent to fund a nude simulated-sex dance, Saturday night “pervert” revues, and the airing of pornographic horror films in San Francisco
$3.4 million for an wildlife “eco-passage” (turtle tunnel) in Lake Jackson, Florida
$30,000 to the Maine Indian Basket Makers Gathering and Festival for basket makers in Maine
$20,000 for Cultural Resources of Rockport, Maine to support storytelling
$3 million in tax credits for the purchase of a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (like a battery-powered golf cart)

8/7/2009 - Congress Gets an Upgrade
$550 Million Slated for Purchase of Eight More Planes as Lawmakers' Travel Soars - By Brody Mullins The Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON BIG SPENDERS CALL FOR EIGHT LUXURY JETS

Missouri's 7th District Candidate for U.S. Congress, Billy Long, speaks out as Congress Approves $500 Million so Top Government Officials Can Travel in Style

SPRINGFIELD, MO (August 7, 2009) - This week, the House approved nearly $500 million for the purchase of eight elite jets to transport members of Congress and top government officials.

"Our nation cannot afford to stay on this destructive path." Billy Long, a U.S. congressional candidate from Southwest Missouri, said. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the national debt is projected to be $16 trillion in ten years time. "The government cannot keep committing future taxpayers to pay for frivolous projects. If this wasteful spending continues at this current level a tremendous debt will be put on every American – more than $37,000 per person or greater."

The congressional shopping list exceeds the Air Force and Defense Department's request to replace aging planes and purchase currently leased aircraft. The House Appropriations Committee added additional funds to the 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill for four luxury jets to be assigned to the D.C. area. While this would normally be considered an earmark, Appropriations merely expanded a line item instead of creating one, hence not requiring the member to identify him/herself. Rather, the jet setter will remain unknown - and Congress as a whole can take the blame for it.

"Runaway spending on unnecessary luxuries such as this and others like it, will only lead to higher inflation, causing the recession to linger even longer with great effects on the people of Southwest Missouri and beyond." Long said.

Less than a year after scolding CEOs for their use of private jets, current congressional leaders once again use the age-old practice of "do as I say, not as I do".