The Slop Master Wins Again - Continued

Two days ago we discussed the unbelievable amount of wasteful spending that the Congress and political class embedded in a domestic spending bill for the 2010 fiscal year budget. I thought that was the end of it even though the waste was spread out in over 5,000 earmarks. I did not know until today that the political class also embeds wasteful spending projects in the huge, annual Defense Department budget bill that is about to be sent to the White House for approval. According to various sources, there are over 1,700 wasteful projects in this bill.

In a speech that Senator John McCain gave yesterday, some of these useless projects include the following (remember, this is a Defense Department budget):

• $500,000 for the Brown Tree Snake Program
• $1.8 million to renovate the Historical Fort Hamilton Community Club in the New York City area.
• $1.6 million to study human genetics at the Maine Institute For Human Genetics and Health in Maine.
• $5 million for the Presido Heritage Center in San Francisco
• $1.6 million for the Center For Space Entrepreneurship
• $2 million for National Initiatives For Applications For Multifunctional Materials
• $1.6 million for a Virtual Business Accelerator In the Silicon Prairie, wherever that is.
• $3 million for the New Jersey Technology Center
• $1.2 million for the American Museum of Natural History Infectious Disease Research
• $4 million for the Hampton University Proton Cancer treatment Initiative
• $3.9 million for Intelligent Decision Exploration, which probably will not be found in Washington
• $4.8 million for the National Oncogenomics and Molecular Imaging Center in Detroit
• $2 million for an Advanced Laboratory for Information Integration in Hawaii
• And my favorite, $18.9 million for a center at the University of Massachusetts "dedicated to educating the general public, students, teachers, new Senators and Senate staff about the role and importance of the Senate."

The list goes on and on but I will stop here. This small list of earmarks will spend over $48 million of the defense budget and have no discernible relationship to the defense of this nation. It is $48 million that should be returned to the taxpayers, or perhaps more importantly, could be spent to support the servicemen and women that are putting their lives on the line everyday in very dangerous places. Maybe the $48 million could be used for better and more bombproof vehicles to stave off injuries from roadside bombs. Maybe the $48 million could be better used to treat the physical and emotionally wounded soldiers who return from the battleground. Maybe the $48 million could be better used for more bulletproof vests. I believe the brown tree snake program and the Fort Hamilton Community Club and the other projects above should take a back seat to taxpayer refunds or better military support. The above types of programs should go find private funding themselves.

However, it is not only non-military projects that are wasting taxpayer money in this bill but actual military projects that are wasteful:

• There is $7.6 million set aside for hypersonic wind tunnel research in Montana. This used to be an Air Force project who decided it was not needed years ago, at which time the project was moved to the Army which has absolutely no need for it. The Army's budget documents said they did not want any part of it. Somehow, though, the project continues in the defense budget even though nobody in the Defense Department wants it. Could it be a certain Senator from the state wants it? That's a good enough reason to waste $7.6 million?
• There is $20 million set aside for the National WWII Museum in New Orleans even though the museum is privately owned and has no connections to any branch of the military.
• There is a $9.5 million earmark for a telescope at the University of Hawaii that the Air Force might be able to use as part of one of its programs. However, the Air Force is only allowed to use the telescope 5% of the time, per the agreement with the University. The Air Force has never asked for budget money to be used for this purpose but for the nine years of its life, the Air Force has been forced to include it in its budget.

How do politicians determine which of these thousands of projects merit taxpayer money? Bottom line is they probably do not know and do not care as long as they get their share of the wasteful project money pie. In a September speech to the VFW, President Obama stated: "If a project doesn't support our troops, we will not fund it. If a system doesn't perform well, we will terminate it. And if Congress sends me a bill loaded with that kind of waste, I will veto it. We will do right by our troops and taxpayers." Apparently, Congressional members did not get a copy of the speech, given the over 1,700 potentially wasteful and non-military programs (e..g. the brown tree snake program).

Well, the President will get his chance with this bill but my bet is that he will sign the bill without a whimper of protest, despite what he said to the VFW. The shame of the whole Obama Presidency is that he squandered his hand earlier in 2009 when his approval rating was north of 70%. He had the nation excited about the potential for change and a new way of doing government in this country. He could have taken bold, positive steps to correct the malignancy in Washington and used his high approval ratings for air cover. Now, his approval rating is below 50% and heading further south and it is now Congress, specifically a small clique of Senators and House members (read: Pelosi, Reid, Durbin, Baucus, etc.) that are calling the shots: it is my opinion that President Obama has become mostly irrelevant less than a year into his term. When he cannot even control wasteful spending that he threatened to clamp down on just 90 days ago, than the only word that comes to mind is irrelevant.

The good news is that the brown tree snake's program is likely to move full steam ahead and the Historical Fort Hamilton Community Club will be better than ever.


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