October 27, 2005

Lamar on Coburn Amendments

I mentioned last night that Senator Lamar Alexander was going to be on Steve Gill's radio show this morning. I didn't get a chance to hear it, but I emailed Steve to find out what happened regarding Alexander's reasoning on voting against the Coburn amendments to cut out a little pork.

Here's what Steve sent me...

He explained that the transportation budget funds involved in the bridge to nowhere projects were based on Alaska federal gas tax proceeds and that if the projects were deleted the dollars would still go to Alaska for their road projects. Essentially, it is up to them to decide how they want to spend the money, and if those projects were cut it would not reduce the actual budget or provide resources that could be shipped to another state. It seems to me that this is a serious PROCESS issue, if that is the case, and raises a more fundamental question: why send these monies from the states to DC if we just send it back so they can spend it like they want? He claimed that they are reducing the budget with real cuts in other areas, and that we need a Presidential line item veto that can pass court muster.

I am not sure why Congress can't exercise a line item approach like Coburn proposed, other than the desire to keep the status quo (you scratch my pork, I'll scratch yours) in place.

As someone asked in the comments below regarding Alexander's potential answer, "did Lamar do his usual two-step dance?" Ah-yep.

The interview is already up in the archives section at WTN's website. Get it here. It might be worth listening to.

Comments:

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Can anyone say RINO?

Posted by: Tim at November 1, 2005 04:55 PM