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Serial Porkers

Something getting minimal press attention seems to be a confrontation between Rep. John Shadegg-AZ and Rep. Don Young-AK over “high priority projects” contained in the Transportation Equity Act of 2005. Shadegg asked Young (who wrote the bill) if Arizona’s portion could be directly conveyed to the state Department of Transportation and not diced up into “priority projects” by Arizona’s delegation. Offended, Shadegg turned down a slice of the pie for his own district and proceeded to vote against the bill.

This infuriated two Phoenix Council members who were hoping to use Shadegg’s allotment to upgrade previously rural roads that are now unable to handle the amount of traffic triggered by the city’s explosive growth.

Shadegg’s motivation might appear ideological or naïve, but he’s on to something. Bush originally drained the National Highway Transportation Fund for his initial “war chest” funding in 2001. He’s continued to reduce the amount of money provided by Washington and increased measures of compliance creating “unfunded mandates”. You can imagine that as much as he might consider projects in his districts justified, there could be other pork barrel spending he loathes. The biggest project in Arizona totaled $13 million for rail grading and underpass upgrading in Tucson. Second largest at $8 million was the extension of the Rio Salado Parkway from Tempe, Arizona west through southern Phoenix. Currently traffic bottlenecks across the Rio Salado from eastern Maricopa County are exacerbated by the lack of a direct route. Completing the Parkway would solve, apparently, many of those woes.

The big beneficiaries would be Arizona’s only two Democratic Congressmen, Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva. But Shadegg just as easily could be upset at other, smaller dollar value projects which he believes have far less value to the community. Yet they all pale to Rep. Young’s monster pet project: a $125 million bridge between the Island of Gravina and Ketchikan, Alaska. Thus, Shadegg has to realize even if he got his way the tax cuts and structural deficits seen by the current Congressional fiscal policy would still leave Arizona scrambling for more money for infrastructure projects.

Notice that while Shadegg tries to appear principled about the matter, the rest of the Republican Congress indulges their penchant for pork while steadfastly ignoring the need to boost revenue. Oh well, John, at least you stood for something.
posted by Thomas at 10:47 PM 0 comments