Parade Magazine - Can Pork Be Stopped?

Parade Magazine - Can Pork Be Stopped?

October 31, 2006

Within two years, you'll be able to find out exactly where your tax dollars are going. A new federal-spending tracker that works like a computer search engine is slated to launch in 2008. Type in anything from Halliburton to Planned Parenthood, and you'll see who's getting your money — and how much. Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), who co-sponsored the initiative with Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.), expects it to put tremendous public pressure on politicians to eliminate wasteful "earmarks," the provisions that lawmakers use to mandate funding for pet projects. Most earmarks are slipped into the committee reports that accompany legislation, and Coburn calls them "the gateway drug to overspending."

"When we've got deficits and are spending $9 billion a month to fight a war, why is the government taking your tax dollars to build sculpture gardens?" asks Coburn. He says the President legally can reject any earmarks that aren't in the actual text of a piece of legislation (more than 95% of them aren't), and he must start doing so. "The U.S. will face a fiscal crisis within a decade as baby boomers retire and put a strain on Social Security and Medicare," notes Coburn. "If America's attitude is simply ‘I'll get mine,' we're history."

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=LatestNews.NewsStories&ContentRecord_id=9fdd1fea-802a-23ad-40b7-e11f76a8b5e4&Issue_id=