Congressman's Take on the Pork-Barrel Transportation Bill

I attended a town hall meeting last night during which Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) was answering questions about the Metro Rail system in the Washington DC area. His main point was that we need much more money to fund and expand the system. Thus, we need to raise new taxes. (Never mind that Virginia just raised taxes by $1 billion through an underhanded scheme of Governor Warner’s such that the state now has a $1.2 billion surplus.) Surely enough, in such a liberal area close to Washington DC, one resident suggested “ending the Iraq War” to pay for funding while another advocated raising taxes by “any amount necessary.”

I asked Congressman Moran about the Transportation Bill that passed last week and whether he believed the “high-priority” projects that I mentioned in an earlier post were actually a “high priority” for the transportation bill. Moran responded that, although some projects clearly weren’t really pertinent to transportation, his Virginia district was going to do pretty well with pet projects, so people like me shouldn’t worry about the hundreds of wasteful projects around the country.

Translation: I couldn’t care less about pork-barrel spending – as long as I bring home enough bacon to get re-elected.

How reassuring that we have members like him to make our laws.