Ohio should return some highway pork to help out with hurricane relief efforts
Saturday, October 15, 2005
RONALD D . UTT
Americans from all walks of life wasted no time in the wake of Hurricane Katrina rallying to help those who survived. From Scout troops to the Salvation Army, they dug into their wallets and volunteered their time.
American businesses stepped forward with multimillion-dollar donations, as did numerous entertainers, including Sean "Diddy" Combs and Celine Dion. Altogether, private contributions totaled more than $1.2 billion within the first four weeks after Katrina’s strike.
That’s a lot of selfless giving. But there should be more, especially from our political leaders. Yes, lawmakers have approved more than $60 billion in disaster aid. But that’s taxpayers’ money and, given the existing federal deficit, borrowed money to boost. It’s time for members of Congress to embrace an idea that’s been attracting support nationwide and sacrifice some of their "own" resources to help the beleaguered citizens of the Gulf Coast.
This concept is simple: Lawmakers should give up some of the billions in frivolous pork projects designed to feather their political nests back home and redirect that money to help meet the far more pressing needs of Katrina’s victims.
The recently enacted highway bill was crammed with $25 billion in pork-barrel spending. Surely Congress should have no problem shifting at least half that amount to legitimate rebuilding projects along the Gulf Coast.
Mississippi and Louisiana must replace dozens of wrecked bridges. Concerned citizens in Alaska have been flooding local newspapers with letters decrying the two bridges (together costing more than $500 million) that Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, secured for his state. One will serve an island with a population of 50 people, who have made the trip to the mainland by ferry for years. It’s clear that many Alaskans are willing to keep taking the ferry for now so that the 500,000 people of New Orleans can have their roads and bridges restored. Will Young listen? Well, not yet, but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stepped forward and offered half the earmarks she had gained for her district in San Francisco.
Yet although support for the giveback concept is spreading, the response from Congress has been mostly silence. A few members have angrily defended the spending and challenged the practicality of the giveback plan — Young calls it "moronic" — while others claim the $2.5 trillion federal budget contains no low-priority programs or wasteful spending.
Really? The fact is, the highway bill contained more than 6,000 earmarks, many so patently devoid of any compelling national purpose that the press publicly ridiculed them. But what seemed amusing then seems obscene today. Except for Pelosi and a few junior Republican House members, most lawmakers have hidden behind a wall of silence, including Ohio’s GOP Sens. Mike DeWine and George V. Voinovich and all of its House members.
Their selfish reluctance is all the more surprising because Ohio’s take contains the usual frivolities one finds in these bills. Its congressional delegation willfully diverted more than $665 million to 245 earmarks, among which are:
• $400,000 to extend a bike trail in Chardon.
• $600,000 to buy high-speed ferries for Black River Excursion Boat Service in Lorain.
• $1.6 million to build an Ohio River Trail from downtown Cincinnati to Salem Road.
• $1.7 million to build a pedestrian bridge in Cleveland.
• $2 million for an "intermodal bikeway" in Independence.
• $8.4 million for transportation enhancement projects in Akron.
None of these earmarks is critical to Ohio, and all of them could be delayed for several years to help rebuild the ravaged infrastructure of the Gulf States.
Today, people walking the streets of post-9/11 New York City can notice something different about the police cars. Many of these vehicles (including a fire truck that, appropriately enough, Louisiana donated to New York after 9/11) bear a message that they were provided by the citizens of another American town, a town duly identified on the patrol cars by the Big Apple’s thankful citizens.
If lawmakers act with wisdom and charity in the weeks ahead, one day those driving to the Big Easy may feel a burst of communal well-being as they read the bronze plaque on the new bridge crossing Lake Pontchartrain: Proudly Provided by the People of Ohio.
Ronald D. Utt is a senior research fellow in economic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation.
ronald.utt@heritage.org
Preserve fitness trails when trimming budget Wednesday, October 26, 2005
I read with some dismay Ronald D. Utt’s Oct. 15 Forum column, "Ohio should return some highway pork to help out with hurricane relief efforts." Not because I disagree with the notion of helping out the battered Gulf Coast, nor because I think the highway bill should be sacrosanct. From the news reports, there appears to be plenty of room for judicious trimming. Rather, I disagree with the areas that Utt has singled out, primarily those involving recreational-trail development. I am a frequent user of the growing Columbus-area trail system and feel that such facilities promote the health and fitness of all of us, and especially those among us who cannot afford health-club memberships or expensive fitness equipment. This is a matter of some concern these days, when news about health issues such as obesity and lack of fitness fills our airwaves and The Dispatch. Moreover, it doesn’t take a calculator to determine that the monies that Utt cites constitute less than 2 percent of the entire amount allocated to Ohio. What of the other 98 percent? Surely there are road projects (which, unlike trail-building, promote the pollution and noise of vehicular traffic) that can be trimmed to produce a considerably greater amount to be used to aid those in the battered Gulf Coast? Spending our tax dollars on things that enhance our health and quality of life is never a wasted effort. NICK PEDICINI Lewis Center |