Under omnibus cover

One of the strongest reasons for President Bush’s tax cuts was his prescient warning that if Congress did not let taxpayers keep more of their own money, lawmakers would spend it.

Besides the powerful stimulus effect the tax cuts have had on the economy, consumer spending and new business investment, Mr. Bush’s $1.7 trillion in tax reductions was also a massive government spending cut, too. That’s $1.7 trillion Congress will not be able to spend during this decade on wasteful boondoggles.

If you have any doubt about this, look at the 1,182-page, House-passed omnibus bill that wrapped up $328 billion in unpassed appropriations before Congress adjourned for the year. It is larded with pork — spending provisions that no House and Senate committee has approved, no federal agency has requested and the administration did not want.

In the corrupt, “I’m going to get mine no matter what the cost” world of pork-barrel spending, members of Congress slip such provisions into bills to do special favors for special interests back home, in effect to buy votes with other people’s money. Last year’s omnibus bill contained 7,651 pork-filled projects that totaled $11.5 billion.

This year’s catch-all bill, which passed the House this week by a vote of 242-176, contains roughly the same number of earmarked items that will cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

Here are some of them:

• $2 million for The First Tee Program in St. Augustine, Fla., to help young people learn to play golf.

• $1.8 million for the Appalachian fruit laboratory in Kearneysville, W.Va.

• $447,000 for a halibut data collection program in Alaska.

• $270,000 for potato storage in Madison, Wis.

• $325,000 for the construction of a swimming pool in Salinas, Calif.

• $500,000 for the Pete Suazo Business Center to purchase additional building space.

• $250,000 for something called the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Center in Prosser, Wash.

• $50 million sought by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa to build a $200 million indoor exhibit about the rain forest. Mr. Grassley first tried to stick this into the energy bill but was blocked from doing so.

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