Pork, It’s Not Just for Breakfast
We continue to examine the “earmarks” in the HHS / Labor Appropriations bill. This time, via the Porkbusters’ database, we can sort by amount. You know, the tax dollars squeezed from us, the taxpayers so that our employees, known as Congressmen, can secretly and without accountability fund projects for friends, benefactors, contributors, and such.
As the first item amply demonstrates, it also is not considered inappropriate to give our tax dollars to projects bearing your own name. You can also sort the database by project, thus giving the viewer a nice collection of “earmarks” going to the same place. Yale University, for example, does quite well, especially considering the tuition it charges and the endowment it has.
If these items are not pork, why aren’t they introduced publicly by the Congressman responsible? Why are they so vague in many cases? Who actually is responsible for seeing that our money, yours and mine, is spent properly?
This is just one of the appropriation bills. This same process happens in just about all of them. We just didn’t find out in time or it was hidden much better.
So, here are the top 15 offenders and they are spending $23.5 million of our money:
Related: Here, Piggy! Piggy! August 16, 2006
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