FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MAY 18, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Let the Pork Wars begin
Leave it to U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. ... Washington's reigning
king of pork.
The senior senator was some upset when a number of his Democratic
colleagues expressed support for Presidnt Bush's tax cut last week. Sen.
Byrd responded by warning them -- first in private, then in public -- that
if they voted to let their constituents keep a little more of what they
earn, Sen. Byrd would see to it that their own pork spending was blocked,
potentially leading to Republican gains in the 2002 off-year elections.
"At a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats last Tuesday," reported
Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, on May 14, "Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.)
threatened to slash the spending prjects of lawmakers who broke ranks to
support President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax-cut plan.
"After delivering the threat on Tuesday, Byrd backed it up with a pointed
floor speech just before the Senate passed the budget resolution.
" 'Let me say to my colleagues, if you vote for this budget conference
report, don't come to the watering hole,' Byrd warned in the floor speech.
...
"But five Democratic Senators ignored the advice of the top Democrat on
the Appropriations Committee, setting up an exploive showdown as the
chamber gets down to brass tacks on the 13 spending bills," Roll Call
continued.
Two Democrats in particular, Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Max Cleland,
D-Ga., are seen as facing serious repercussions should Byrd follow through
on his threat, with the result that they "fail to bring home the bacon" to
their respective states. Both Senators are up for re-election in 2002 and
the GOP is expected to target them by providing money and resources to
their respective Republican opponents.
(The three other Democrats who could face Byrd's wrath are Sens. John
Breaux, D-La., Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Zell Miller, D-Ga.)
Sen. Byrd at least does all parties the favor of stripping away any
remaining veils of modesty from the true Democratic agenda, which seems to
size up as follows:
Tax cuts are to be opposed because they could somewhat limit the ability
of senior senators to waste hundreds of millions on "pork" projects never
envisioned or authorized by those who penned the Constitution. Suh pork
projects, in turn, are vital not so much because the barefoot citizens of
Gandeeville, W.Va., really need an eight-lane federal highway
"demonstration project" to better link them to the vital parsnip and possum
patches of Elmira and Gassaway.
No, the purpose of these allocations is forthrightly to guarantee the
re-election of senators who need to brag on the campaign stump that they've
"brought home the bacon" to their local jurisdiction ... regardless of how
useless and inefficient the spending, regardless of the resultant general
reduction in financial independence and well-being of taxpayers nationwide.
After all, the more we're overburdened and (in relative terms)
impoverished, the less able American families will be to pay for their own
food, clothing, and education -- heck, even to stay home and rear their own
kids -- and the more "need" will thus be expressed for further handouts
from Uncle Sam ... in turn generating demand for additional federal
"programs."
Ah, what fearful symmetry. Government reduced to a set of intricate and
expensive "solutions" to problems of its own making.
(What, my use of "impoverished" is inappropriate? Many of our American
fathers and grandfathers supported their families in free-standing homes on
a single salary, and paid cash for a new car every four years. Can you?)
For the record, President Bush's tiny tax cuts would not have the effect
of reducing federal spending -- in fact, federal largesse will continue to
grow at a record pace, even if American wage-earners are allowed to hang
onto the tiny additional stipend now proposed.
The correct answer to Sen. Byrd is that we hope he indeed follows through
on starting to trim his colleagues' "pork." Let's watch the percentage by
which he determines their spending requests can be trimmed, while still
meeting the quite limited, legitimate spending obligations of the Congress
under Article I, Section 8.
Then, those same rates of reduction should be applied to him and all his
colleagues ... after the GOP gains the five additional seats which Sen.
Byrd now appears so willing to render vulnerable in 2002.
A $1.35 trillion tax-cut? They ain't seen nothin' yet.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to
Privacy Alert, 1475 Terminal Way, Suite E for Easy, Reno, NV 89502. His
book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement,
1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site
www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved,
as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V.
Debs (1855-1926)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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