If this is spending 'compromise,' forget it

Published May 15, 2006 at midnight

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The House recently passed a $94.4 billion "emergency" spending bill to cover the costs of military operations, hurricane relief and avian-flu preparedness. The Senate followed with a separate, $108.9 billion measure that funded those projects and added a king-sized helping of pork.

President Bush said he would veto any bill that spent more than $94.4 billion, and a conference committee of the two houses is trying to reconcile the matter.

An aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist suggested last week that the final bill would not exceed the president's ceiling - but that the pork would stay, too.

Everybody wins, right?

Of course not. Under Frist's cockamamie scheme, the programs in the House bill would get 87 percent of their original funding (94.4/108.9), leaving $12.3 billion, or roughly 87 percent of the money added by the Senate, for a Beltway barbecue.

Such odious programs as Mississippi's $700 million "railroad to nowhere" may still be funded, while Gulf Coast reconstruction projects, and oh yes, U.S. troops in the field, get shortchanged.

All so that, to borrow from Blazing Saddles, candidates this fall can protect their phoney-baloney jobs. Unbelievable.

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