The "Bridge to Nowhere" Has Staying Power

You'd think this would be so much of a slam dunk that despite the authorship of the ideologically odorous Tom ("Kill em All") Coburn, that a silly bridge that connects Nowhere, Alaska to Podunk, Alaska might get a few more than 15 votes to defund what should rightfully be either a private or state matter. Club for Growth and the National Taxpayer Union have been all over it today (I'd have noticed, but I had a day job). Since this is one of those rare moments when CfG was actually on the side of angels for once, I'll offer the equally rare applause of their highlighting the vote.

The sad, but illuminating, part of this debate and vote (it lost 15-82) is that we can finally see through the facade that Republicans are for spending cuts. To be sure, our own side truly missed an opportunity here. But the minority party usually only has one route to get what little crumbs they're going to get in the lege ... trade votes. Trade values go up considerably when dealing with the folks at Appropriations, so ... you can guess the bind that several good Dems found themselves in. I'm not happy with the outcome on either side, but particular praise really does deserve to head Russ Feingold's way. He not only voted against the last attempt at the Coburn Amendment, but he stuck with several other Republican deficit hawks through the earlier attempts in the day. There were a few latecomers at the final vote for our side: Bayh, Conrad & Landreiu.

The amendment was, on it's face, a simple matter of defunding three particularly ridiculous pork projects in order to offset Katrina relief spending. Under the surface, however, such votes inevitably unbind the knitting that gets other spending done in D.C. In other words, if Senator A wants a pond named after his daughter, and committee chair B wants a research grant to go to his alma mater in order to make some homestate donors REALLY happy, and freshman minority Senator C wants to pave a few roads back home, you get all three parties to sign off on each other even though Sen. C may well find the project of Sen. A utterly ridiculous.

So Coburn tugged on the shoestring that kept that shoe afoot. I suspect it won't be the last time I applaud the crankcase for a job well done. Even Jesse Helms had the irrascible habit of being 101% correct on bringing Senate pay raises up for a vote so his colleagues would be held accountable for it. Of course, his co-sponsor was usually none other than my political hero, William Proxmire. Sure, that helped. Coburn's first target was towards Dem projects, though: one each in Rhode Island, Nebraska, and Washington. If Coburn really wanted to win instead of scoring debating points, he'd have led off with the Ted Stevens Bridge to Nowhere (perhaps along with an Oklahoma project, as well), stared down Stevens' threat to quit the Senate, and welcomed all sides in a romp of a victory. But there was never a plan for victory by Coburn ... just a plan for building campaign points.

In the real world, what would have happened if Harry Reid whipped our caucus over to Coburn's side? Well, Ted Stevens likely would have said something like: "Fine, you win. Now let's review every other pork project under the sun and start cutting." And, of course, every project that would have been cut would have been in a state with two Democratic Senators. Well, a few choice Oklahoma (and Arizona) projects would have also gotten the axe.

All of this, however, underscores the reality of pork: it's not pork that bothers people ... it's other people's pork that bothers people. After all, that "Jeffersonian conservative" John Culberson has no problem sending pork back to the Med Center here in Houston. Tom DeLay was all over Ellington Field and NASA promising future riches during the past 2 years. Phil Gramm never blinked before bragging about the riches he brought to Texas A&M (especially when he didn't have anything to do with such riches). In fact, I have yet to hear any of the leading Houston-area libertarian conservatives match me in a call for privatizing NASA. It's one thing to root, root, root for Ron Paul whenever he makes a pointless aside, you see. It's another to actually take a stand closer to home. That's sorta like being against gay marriage out of newly discovered concern for "protecting marriage," but not wanting to do a thing about no-fault divorce or other more tangible real threats to the institution of marriage.

Still, it's probably no mystery that, despite the head of NASA admitting that the shuttle and Space Station were boondoggles, there was no word of John Cornyn or Kay Bailey Hutchison to take a bold stance against pork when they knew darn well that they were more than knee-deep in it themselves. Pork is what other people do. Nothing here in Texas but a bunch of vitally necessary "infrastructure."

UPDATE: Need any further proof that the modern GOP is completely unmoored from conservatism? Try machine-minted, Texas freshman Rep. Louis Gohmert on for size:

Louis Gohmert of Texas: Earmarks aren't always bad; "By golly, I want to make sure this goes where it needs to go...I don't mind an earmark there..."

God as my witness, I did not know people still used "by golly" in everyday conversation. Yodelling contests, yes ... conversation, no.