PrairiePundit

Reuters: As Washington has tightened its belt in recent years, the budget cuts have sliced most deeply in states where President Obama is unpopular, according to an analysis of federal spending by Reuters. Between the 2009 and 2013 fiscal years, funding for a wide swath of discretionary grant programs, from Head Start preschool education to anti drug initiatives, fell by an average of 40 percent in Republican-leaning states like Texas and Mississippi. By contrast, funding to Democratic-leaning states such as California and politically competitive swing states like Ohio dropped by 25 percent. Though Congress sets overall spending levels, the Obama administration determines where much of that money ends up. Lawmakers also have curtailed their ability to direct money to their home states when they adopted a ban on spending in 2011 known as "earmarks." That has given administration officials more power to steer money to places that might return the favor with votes, said John H...

Fox News: Americans could be on the hook to send Brazilian cotton farmers millions of dollars if Congress passes the current version of the farm bill making its way through both chambers. The measure is just one of dozens of provisions and amendments tucked into the sprawling 1,000-page bill which some critics are blasting as a pork-filled government giveaway. While lawmakers on the House side began debating their version on Tuesday -- with much of the debate centered on the bill's funding for food stamps -- others are raising alarm about the subsidies that remain in the package. The yearly $147 million payout to Brazil, for example, is part of the international fallout stemming from U.S. government subsidies for domestic cotton farmers. About a decade ago, Brazil sued the U.S. before the World Trade Organization. In its complaint, the South American country claimed the U.S. government had subsidized American cotton farmers so much it would make it impossible for other countries ...

Ben Howe: $20 Million to Inspect Catfish: Zero Catfish Inspected It is going to be hard to get these people serious about cutting spending.  That is why it is important to elect Romney and Ryan.  You have to start somewhere.

Image via Wikipedia NY Times: Gone for now are the likes of the taxpayer-financed teapot museum, or studies on the mating habits of crabs. But also shelved are a project to help consolidate information about arrests in Brazos County , Tex., and staffing for two new shelters for abused women and children in Salt Lake City . A rural county in Wisconsin will not be able to upgrade its communication system, and a road in Kentucky will not be widened next year. Across the country, local governments, nonprofit groups and scores of farmers, to name but a few, are waking up to the fact that when Congress stamped out earmarks last week, it was talking about their projects, too. Tensions are particularly acute in districts where new conservative lawmakers, many of whom criticized throughout their campaigns the practice of quietly inserting earmarks into spending bills, are coming face to face with local governments and interest groups who were counting on federal dollars to help shore...

Image via Wikipedia Michael Barone: Where can the new Congress start cutting spending? Here's one obvious answer: high-speed rail . The Obama administration is sending billions of stimulus dollars around the country for rail projects that make no sense and that, if they are ever built, will be a drag on taxpayers indefinitely. When incoming Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio canceled high-speed rail projects, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood refused to let them spend the dollars on other forms of transportation and sent the funds instead to California and other states. Walker argued that Wisconsin didn't need $810 billion for a 78-mile line between Madison and Milwaukee because there's already a transportation artery -- Interstate 94 -- that enables people to get from one city to the other in a little more than an hour (I once drove that route to have dinner in Milwaukee). Kasich's rationale? "They tried to give us $400 million...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife Timothy Carney: Now that she has apparently won re-election without the backing of the Republican Party , Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is in debt to nobody -- besides the revolving-door K Street lobbyists and government contractors who financed her write-in campaign . As her write-in votes surpassed the votes for Republican nominee Joe Miller this week, Murkowski asserted her independence from the party. Murkowski told the press she feels liberated because she won "not because I came as my party's nominee but because a very, very wide range of Alaskans of all political stripes have stepped up and said 'you're the person we want to represent us in Washington.' " The Hill newspaper reported, "Murkowski said her 'backbone is stiffer, straighter' " from winning as a write-in. And how is Murkowski standing up to the GOP bosses? By rejecting the party's earmark ban and promising to pork up spending ...

Washington Times: Is America losing its taste for bacon? When it comes to the congressional variety, members of the powerful appropriations committees are finding that holding the nation's purse strings — and the power the positions afford in doling out pork-barrel projects back home — are no guarantee these days for re-election. Six of the 13 members of the Senate Appropriations Committee up for re-election this year have announced they'll retire or have lost a primary challenge. A seventh, Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, is trailing challenger Rep. Joe Sestak in the polls heading to Tuesday's primary. The committee has 30 total members. In the House, powerful Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat, announced this month that he won't seek a 22nd term in office. Even Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, an appropriations committee veteran who hails from one of the most pork-barrel-friendly states — West Virginia — couldn't k...

NY Times: Jolted by a sudden tightening of the rules, lobbyists and military contractors who have long relied on lucrative earmarks from Congress were scrambling Thursday to find new ways to keep the federal money flowing. “The playing field has changed dramatically,” said Michael H. Herson, a lobbyist in Washington whose firm, American Defense International, represents numerous defense industry contractors who have already put in their requests this year for earmark money. Those clients, who along with hundreds of other businesses got $1.7 billion last year through the controversial practice of awarding earmarks, will now be barred from receiving money under a new policy adopted Wednesday by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. House Republicans, seeking to outdo the Democrats in ethics reform, went even further Thursday by agreeing to swear off all earmarks, for both nonprofit and commercial organizations, for the next year. “This is the best day we’ve...

Micheal Ramirez has the proper diagnosis. Click on the image for a larger view.

Michael Ramirez looks at the Obama double speak. Click on the image for a larger view.

Some college students from Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, talked their school into subsidizing a trip to five southern states to search for the best pork barbecue. Judging by the stimulus bill in congress these guys probably have a good future in politics. They already know how to find the pork and get someone else to help pay for it.

Pat Toomey: ... The Club for Growth recently conducted a nationwide poll on government spending, and the results were exactly the opposite of what most politicians have been saying for years. Voters are fed up with Washington's out-of-control spending. Politicians aren't representing the will of the people when they bring home the bacon. They are really representing the will of their special-interest cronies. And it's not just conservative voters who feel that way. Voters across the board have finally found something they can agree on even if their elected officials can't: It's time to cut the fat, even if that means fewer projects for their own districts. Conducted in late June, the poll surveyed 800 voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46%. Likely voters were asked the following question: "All things being equal, for whom would you be more likely to vote for the U.S. Congress: 1) A candidate who wants to cut overall federal spending, even if t...

Washington Times: The Senate will soon consider legislation with an impressive-sounding name — Advancing America's Priorities Act. But the bill being pushed by Democratic leaders includes lots of lawmakers' pet priorities, such as a commission on the "Star-Spangled Banner" and the War of 1812, $1.5 billion for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and $5 million for a museum in Poland. The legislation lumps nearly 40 separate bills into one and authorizes numerous "earmarks," the targeted spending for projects that Democrats often ridiculed as pork-barrel when they swept into power 18 months ago. Critics are even more concerned about the way all this spending might be approved. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , Nevada Democrat, is threatening to use a parliamentary tactic known as "filling the tree," which would preclude amendments and make it difficult for lawmakers and the White House to block projects they consider wasteful....

John Fund: House Republicans clearly suffer from a form of split personality. Last month, Minority Leader John Boehner unveiled a series of reform proposals he dubbed "Change You Deserve." But a few days later, over half of his GOP caucus voted for a farm bill full of pork-barrel projects. Pragmatic Republicans who voted for the farm bill defend themselves privately by claiming GOP voters send mixed signals, saying they want smaller government while also pressing for federal largesse. But is that still the case following the egregious spending excesses of the Bush years, and the victory of John McCain, an antipork candidate, in presidential primaries? This week, a GOP primary for an open House seat in California featured a major clash between pragmatic and principled conservatism. The clear winner in the Sacramento-area district was state Sen. Tom McClintock, a politician popular with grassroots voters for his principled campaign for governor in the 2003 recall election won ...

Robert Samuelson: We'll have to discard the old adage "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it." It is inoperative in this era of global warming, because the whole point of controlling greenhouse gas emissions is to do something about the weather. This promises to be hard and perhaps futile, but there are good and bad ways of attempting it. One of the bad ways is cap-and-trade. Unfortunately, it's the darling of environmental groups and their political allies. The chief political virtue of cap-and-trade -- a complex scheme to reduce greenhouse gases -- is its complexity. This allows its environmental supporters to shape public perceptions in essentially deceptive ways. Cap-and-trade would act as a tax, but it's not described as a tax. It would regulate economic activity, but it's promoted as a "free market" mechanism. Finally, it would trigger a tidal wave of influence-peddling, as lobbyists scrambled to exploit the sys...

AP: The House overwhelmingly rejected George W. Bush's veto Wednesday of a $290 billion farm bill, but what should have been a stinging defeat for the president became an embarrassment for Democrats. Only hours before the House's 316-108 vote, Bush had vetoed the five-year measure, saying it was too expensive and gave too much money to wealthy farmers when farm incomes are high. The Senate then was expected to follow suit quickly. Action stalled, however, after the discovery that Congress had omitted a 34-page section of the bill when lawmakers sent the massive measure to the White House. That means Bush vetoed a different bill from the one Congress passed, leaving leaders scrambling to figure out whether it could become law. Democrats hoped to pass the entire bill, again, on Thursday under expedited rules usually reserved for unopposed legislation. Lawmakers also probably will have to pass an extension of current farm law, which expires Friday. ... They apparently have to r...

David Brooks: ... My colleagues on The Times’s editorial page called the bill “disgraceful.” My former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page ripped it as a “scam.” Yet such is the logic of collective action; the bill is certain to become law. It passed with 81 votes in the Senate and 318 in the House — enough to override President Bush’s coming veto. Nearly everyone in Congress got something. The question amid this supposed change election is: Who is going to end this sort of thing? Barack Obama talks about taking on the special interests. This farm bill would have been a perfect opportunity to do so. But Obama supported the bill, just as he supported the 2005 energy bill that was a Christmas tree for the oil and gas industries. Obama’s vote may help him win Iowa, but it will lead to higher global food prices and more hunger in Africa. Moreover, it raises questions about how exactly he expects to bring about the change that he promises. If elected, Obama’s main op...

Robert Novak: Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, 38 and having served less than five terms, did not leap over a dozen of his seniors to become the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee by bashing GOP leaders. But an angry Ryan delivered unscripted remarks on the House floor last Wednesday as the farm bill neared passage: "This bill is an absence of leadership. This bill shows we are not leading." Ryan's fellow reformer Jeff Flake of Arizona, 45 and in his fourth term, is less cautious about defying the leadership and has been kept off key committees. On Wednesday, he said of a $300 billion bill that raises farm subsidies and is filled with non-farm pork, "Sometimes, here in Washington, we tend to drink our own bath water and believe our own press releases." A bill that raises spending 44 percent above last year's level has been approved by a majority of both Senate and House Republicans, dooming any chance of sustaining President Bush 's pro...

Washington Times Editorial: As Congress heads toward the Memorial Day recess, the House and Senate Democratic leadership seem to be competing with each other to see which chamber can pass the more irresponsible bill to fund U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Rep. David Obey, Wisconsin Democrat, and the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Sen. Robert Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, have larded up their respective bills with such things as new domestic spending, along with a tax increase to fund a seriously flawed veterans education bill; a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq; crippling limitations on the CIA's ability to interrogate captured terrorists and even an amnesty plan that would benefit illegal-alien farmworkers. In other words, they have put in more than enough objectionable provisions to trigger a presidential veto. On the House side, the Democrats on Thursday managed to pass a "war funding...

Washington Examiner: Pathetic. Craven. Irresponsible. Unprincipled. Those and similar adjectives apply to every member of Congress who voted for the bloated, anti-consumer piece of legislative corruption known as the Food and Energy Conservative Act of 2008 a k a as “the farm bill.” President Bush has promised to veto the bill. To put it plainly, everybody in Congress who votes to override the coming Bush veto should be retired come November because they will have voted for a measure that is nothing more -- or less -- than a $300 billion giveaway of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money. This is especially true for conservative Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats who brag about their fiscal rectitude. We’ve already editorialized that the bill is a budge buster even without the grab bag of spending gimmicks. We’ve noted that it will continue to give subsidies to millionaires who actually live in Manhattan and who might not even use their “farmland” for food crops. (Those subsidies will co...