Pork Busting Mania

Glenn Reynolds seems to be one of the big movers behind the recent craze in “pork busting.” Frankly I see it as a big fat zero. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see something come of this, but my gut feeling is that this is like most things these days, a flash in the pan. It is another Ashlee Simpson, and in a few more weeks nobody will care anymore as something else will have come up to distract everybody. Where was this kind of drive a year ago, or for that matter from the day Bush opened up the Federal coffers and started spending like a heroin junkie with a major jones? I’ll tell you where, nowhere. Nobody cared. Nobody will care in a few more weeks. So all this pork busting blogging…color me unimpressed.

FILED UNDER: US Politics, ,
Steve Verdon
About Steve Verdon
Steve has a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and attended graduate school at The George Washington University, leaving school shortly before staring work on his dissertation when his first child was born. He works in the energy industry and prior to that worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Division of Price Index and Number Research. He joined the staff at OTB in November 2004.

Comments

  1. Some of the Republicans seem to be serious, though it’s not directed at their pork.

  2. Herb says:

    Steve, we are in total agreement. All of these so called Represenatives of the people only care about their political well being and futures. There is only one soloution, Vote them out of office and push for term limits. These political “wards of the state” need to go.

    PS: is the spell checker working?

  3. Herb says:

    On further thought, These pork barrel politicans should be paid in proportion to the amount of taxpayer dollars they save.

    no savings, no pay

    If they continue to spend, then they pay out of their own pockets, not the taxpayers pocket

  4. Are we seriously talking about pork, because the politicians will talk about it all day, but will never do anything about it as long as the people don’t care, and they most certainly don’t. I am sure ya’ll have seen the poll that was done on this subject and about 5% of the people care about the budget when compared to just about every conceivable issue. Until one of two things happens spending will be crazy, 1) the people actually start caring (doubt it) or 2) the Democrats take either the House, Senate, or the White House. If we have a divided government I think we might bring spending down SOME.

  5. Josh Cohen says:

    I really wish I could get behind Porkbusters, because I really do think there’s too much useless spending at the federal level, but then, that huge highway bill that was just signed greatly benefited my company, and without that pork (which is what many are calling it), my job might have been a little less secure.