The U.S. House of Representatives has passed an "omnibus appropriations bill" for Fiscal Year 2004 (HR 2673), and it is a doozy. In a rush to get home for the holidays, the members bundled seven unpassed appropriations bills into one, and mixed them all up with a generous serving of lard straight from the political pork barrel. The Heritage Foundation has published a list of "earmarked" spending items specified in the bill. The list bears exquisite testimony to the profligacy of your federal government.
In Michigan, there is no comparable list of identifiable pork, but that doesn’t mean state taxpayers do not subsidize a barrel-full of wasteful or outrageous expenditures. It just means that budgets passed by our Legislature do not list the pork in such neat lists of separate line items.
Instead, tens or hundreds of individual expenditures are rolled up into single line items with titles like "education services" or "incentive grants." Most citizens can point to particular grants or programs that qualify as "pork-barrel spending," but following and documenting the money trail is a challenge.
The closest thing to a well-documented Michigan "pork list" is found in the Mackinac Center’s publication, "Recommendations to Strengthen Civil Society and Balance Michigan’s State Budget," by Director of Fiscal Policy Michael LaFaive. This document takes each government department and program, explains what it is supposed to accomplish, and recommends whether it should be kept as is, scaled back, or eliminated altogether.
Here is the list of federal pork that the Heritage Foundation plucked out of HR 2673:
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$200,000 |
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland, Ohio |
|
|
$1,800,000 |
2003 Women's World Cup Tournament |
|
|
$75,000 |
Vintage Radio Programs and Jazz Museum, East Stroudsburg University |
|
|
$100,000 |
Kids Rock Free educational program, Fender [Guitar] Museum of the Arts Foundation, Corona, California |
|
|
$500,000 |
Bike path, St. Petersburg, Florida |
|
|
$2,000,000 |
Tools for Tolerance program, California |
|
|
$725,000 |
Please Touch Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
|
|
$100,000 |
Renovation of the historic Coca-Cola building in Macon, Georgia |
|
|
$150,000 |
National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation |
|
|
$6,000,000 |
Police Athletic League |
|
|
$250,000 |
Call Me Mister program, Clemson University |
|
|
$500,000 |
New England Amer-I-Can Program |
|
|
$150,000 |
Rock School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
|
|
$16,000 |
National Distance Running Hall of Fame, Utica, New York |
|
|
$225,000 |
Hawaii statehood celebration |
|
|
$325,000 |
Construction of a swimming pool in Salinas, California |
|
|
$100,000 |
History competition during National History Day in Iowa |
|
|
$175,000 |
Therapeutic Horsemanship center, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania |
|
|
$315,000 |
Formosan Subterranean Termite research |
|
|
$100,000 |
Public service recognition week |
|
|
$100,000 |
Construction of an intergenerational daycare center in San Fernando Valley, California |
|
|
$372,000 |
B&O Railroad Museum emergency restoration, Baltimore, Maryland |
|
|
$75,000 |
Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, Washington, DC |
|
|
$225,000 |
Construction of Blue-Gray Civil War Theme Park, Kentucky |
|
|
$75,000 |
North Pole Transit System JARC Program, Alaska |
|
|
$250,000 |
Feasibility study of establishing Suffolk (Virginia) Workforce Development Center |
|
|
$350,000 |
Construction for a folk cultural center in Pinellas County, Florida |
|
|
$400,000 |
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky |
|
|
$90,000 |
Olive fruitfully research |
|
|
$150,000 |
Traffic light, Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District, New York |
|
|
$100,000 |
People for People, Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
|
|
$100,000 |
Amphitheater construction, North Star Productions, Inc., Bracken County, Kentucky |
|
|
$2,000,000 |
First Tee program |
|
|
$150,000 |
Regional Youth Baseball Complex Lancaster, California |
|
|
$100,000 |
John Singleton Mosby Museum Foundation in Warrenton, Virginia |
|
|
$180,000 |
Seafood waste research, Fairbanks, Arkansas |
|
|
$400,000 |
Walla Walla Public Schools, Walla Walla, Washington |
|
|
$900,000 |
Kincaid Park Trail Connection, Alaska |
|
|
$20,000 |
Southern Star Development Corporation, Louisville, Kentucky |
|
|
$85,000 |
Comprehensive Transportation Plan for Lewisburg, West Virginia |
|
|
$100,000 |
Norman Hall project, University of Florida |
|
|
$225,000 |
Museum of Aviation Foundation Inc, Warner Robins, Georgia |
|
|
$250,000 |
Lou Frey Institute of Politics, University of Central Florida |
|
|
$270,000 |
Sustainable olive production |
|
|
$5,000,000 |
Kennedy Center Potomac River Pedestrian and Bike Path |
|
|
$100,000 |
National Civil War Museum, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania |
|
|
$200,000 |
Cedar glades research |
|
|
$250,000 |
Theater construction, Studio for the Arts, Pocahontas, Arkansas |
|
|
$2,000,000 |
Intermodal Transload Facility, Quincy, Washington |
|
|
$110,000 |
Construction of a dental clinic in Bassfield, Mississippi |
|
|
$220,000 |
New Mexico Retail Association, Albuquerque, New Mexico |
|
|
$400,000 |
Davenport Music History Museum, Davenport, Iowa |
|
|
$3,000,000 |
US 12 Widening, Wallula Junction to Walla Walla, Washington |
|
|
$25,000 |
Alex Haley House Museum, Henning, Tennessee |
|
|
$225,000 |
Rialto Square Theater, Joliet, Illinois |
|
|
$5,000,000 |
Project SOCRATES |
|
|
$90,000 |
Rabbit Run Community Arts Association, Madison, Ohio |
|
|
$150,000 |
Renovation of Farmers market, Dallas, Texas |
|
|
$200,000 |
Merit School of Music's after-school program |
|
|
$200,000 |
Advanced Traffic Analysis Center, North Dakota |
|
|
$250,000 |
Nevada Test Site Oral History Project |
|
|
$400,000 |
National Center for American Revolution, Wayne, Pennsylvania |
|
|
$1,000,000 |
Hal Rogers Parkway, Kentucky |
|
|
$1,000,000 |
Ship Creek Improvements, Alaska |
|
|
$2,000,000 |
I-SAFE America |
|
|
$50,000 |
National Canal Museum, Easton, Pennsylvania |
|
|
$100,000 |
Mystic Seaport, the Museum of America and the Sea |
|
|
$200,000 |
Renovation of First National Bank Building, Greenfield, Massachusetts |
|
|
$250,000 |
Martha's Village and Kitchen, Indio, California |
|
|
$270,000 |
Potato storage |
|
|
$1,000,000 |
Transylvania Community Hospital, Brevard, North Carolina |
|
|
$6,000,000 |
Treasure Island Bridge |
|
|
$80,000 |
Hot Springs Bike Trail, Arkansas |
|
|
$90,000 |
Karnal bunt research, Manhattan, Kansas |
|
|
$175,000 |
Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas |
|
|
$210,000 |
Winston Link Museum, Roanoke, Virginia |
|
|
$250,000 |
James S. Taylor Memorial Home, Louisville, Kentucky |
|
|
$250,000 |
Museum of Broadcast Communications, Chicago, Illinois |
|
|
$500,000 |
Traffic Signal Replacement Program, New Rochelle, New York |
|
|
$2,000,000 |
Parents Anonymous |
|
|
$100,000 |
"Servicing our Youth" |
|
|
$275,000 |
Refurbishment of the Coach George E. Ford Center, Powder Springs, Georgia |
|
|
$150,000 |
Piper's Opera House Programs, Inc., Virginia City, Nevada |
|
|
$1,250,000 |
US-2, Dover Bridge, Bonner County, Idaho |
|
|
$113,000 |
Healing Place, Louisville, Kentucky |
|
|
$500,000 |
Jim Thorpe Bridge Renovation Project, Pennsylvania |
|
|
$600,000 |
Web Wise Kids |
|
|
$800,000 |
Mammoth Lakes Bus Purchase, California |
|
|
$100,000 |
Renovate the Jamestown (Ohio) Opera House |
|
|
$400,000 |
Ed Roberts Campus transit center, California |
|
|
$750,000 |
The Doe Fund's Ready, Willing & Able program |
|
|
$160,000 |
Grapevine Bus Purchase, Texas |
|
|
$500,000 |
Round Rock Higher Education Center, Southwest Texas State University |
|
|
$1,400,000 |
Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, Arizona |
|
|
$25,000 |
Transylvania County, North Carolina, Sheriff's Citizens Observer Patrol and Education Team |
|
|
$200,000 |
Chaldean Community Culture Center, West Bloomfield, Michigan |
|
|
$300,000 |
Milwaukee Summer Stars |
|
|
$450,000 |
Johnny Appleseed Heritage Center, Inc., Ashland County, Ohio |
|
|
$750,000 |
Intelligent Transportation Systems, Wichita Transit Authority |
|
|
$1,500,000 |
Operation Streetsweeper |
|
|
$125,000 |
Planning for new route over Cape Fear River, North Carolina |
|
|
$300,000 |
Omnitrans Paratransit Vehicles, California |
|
|
$1,000,000 |
WestStart Vehicular Flywheel Project, Washington |
|
|
$15,000 |
Pines of Peace, Inc., Ontario, New York |
|
|
$75,000 |
U.S. Dream Academy, Inc., Columbia, Maryland |
|
|
$200,000 |
Oneont Bus Replacement, New York |
|
|
$450,000 |
Trout Genome Mapping |
|
|
$500,000 |
LOVE Social Services, Fairbanks, Arkansas |
|
|
$750,000 |
Broken Bow rail spur, Oklahoma |
|
|
$1,000,000 |
DelTrac Statewide Integration, Delaware |
(Source: The Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm377.cfm )
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