Pork vs. Iraq

The House and Senate Friday completed action on a new five-year, $286 billion transportation bill that editorial boards and good government groups will decry as pork-laden. As you would expect, just 12 of 535 members of Congress voted against the bill.

"We talk about jobs, jobs, jobs," House Speaker Dennis Hastert said. "For every billion dollars that is spent in this highway bill over the next not even five years now, it will create 48,000 jobs in this country." Also on message was Majority Whip Roy Blunt: "This is about jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs," Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri said Thursday.

Critics were equally adamant. John McCain called the bill "terrifying in its fiscal consequences and disappointing for the lack of fiscal discipline." Citizens Against Government Waste said, "The sweet smell of pork has blinded members of Congress to the waste and inefficiency of federal transportation policy."

But let's put this bill in perspective. It spends $286 billion over 5 years, and most of the money comes from from dedicated fuel taxes , not general income taxes. Yet over that same period, we will spend roughly twice that in Iraq-- $600 billion, or roughly 30 times the size of Iraq's economy in 2003.

So I don't begrudge members of Congress one dollar of transportation funding. It's only about $4 per American per week, or $220 each year. Sure, some of the projects may seem wacky, but the real question we should be asking is why we can't spend as much on projects at home as we do on projects abroad. The original House transportation bill was $350 billion, and there are clearly significant homeland security infrastructure projects that Congress has failed to fund. After all, a transportation bill 30 times the U.S. economy would be $350 TRILLION, not billion.

If transportation really creates so many jobs, particularly working class construction jobs, then the most important question to ask about this bill is why President Bush held up the bill for almost 3 years by insisting that it remain smaller than his budget for Iraq.