Republican porkers

As the presidential race begins to creep closer and closer, the amount of horrendously stupid things being said by candidates has been skyrocketing. All too often one of the candidates, apparently fearing losing the race more than his or her mind, makes a dumbfounding comment that makes you wonder how they got so far in the first place. A little while ago, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Co., said that the U.S. should consider bombing Islamic holy sites in retaliation for a theoretical future attack on the U.S. by al-Qaeda.\nThis week, the usually respectable and intelligent Sen. John McCain, R-Az., made the unfortunate mistake of trying to score political points by insulting Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. When Mrs. Clinton requested earmarks for $1 million in federal funds to go to a museum celebrating the Woodstock Music and Art Festival, Sen. McCain had this to say: “The Woodstock Museum is a shining example of what’s wrong with Washington on pork-barrel, out-of-control spending.”\nThis quote begs the obvious question: Has John McCain been asleep for the last half-decade or so?\nWith so much government waste and out of control spending in the last six years, one would think that there is a better “shinning example” of financial irresponsibility to pick out. Perhaps Sen. McCain could have chosen the $9 billion unaccounted for in the Iraqi reconstruction budget as a good example of waste. Or maybe he should have criticized the fact that President Bush did not veto a single spending bill until well into his sixth year as president. Why are all of these not examples of spending gone awry, if spending millions of dollars on a museum is? \nIt’s sad because Sen. McCain, not presidential candidate McCain, used to be a strong advocate against actual pork-barrel spending. He was a strong critic of the “bridge to nowhere,” a project that attempted to build a $400 million bridge that would connect a town of 8,000 people to an island with a population of 50. The bridge was to be longer than the Golden Gate Bridge and taller than the Brooklyn Bridge. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, championed the bill and is currently the target of an FBI investigation for \ncorruption.\nWhile you may or may not agree about funding the Woodstock museum, it is certainly not the largest problem we face when we talk about battling out of control government spending. If Republicans like McCain and his fellow presidential contenders want to bring up the issue of out of control pork-barrel spending, they do it at their own risk. The Republican-led Congress before the 2006 midterms presided over the largest increase in federal spending since Lyndon Johnson’s The Great Society.\nSo go ahead Mr. McCain, please tell the American people why pork-barrel spending is harmful to our nation. Tell them how it takes away potential funding from important areas like highway infrastructure and health care. \nBut please, $1 million for a museum is not a shining example of what’s wrong; your Republican friends are.